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RIGHTS-CHINA: Jury Still Out On Fewer Crimes Punishable by Death

Gordon Ross

BEIJING, Oct 20 2010 (IPS) - China’s top legislative body is considering scrapping the death penalty for 13 non-violent crimes, including tax evasion, tomb raiding and animal smuggling. But the impact these changes will have on the total number of prisoners the country puts to death is uncertain.

The proposed changes come as the result of a push by Chinese legal scholars who argue that too many people are being unfairly executed for committing trivial crimes. The group has already successfully persuaded authorities to require Supreme Court approval for all death sentences and to make confessions obtained by torture inadmissible in capital cases.

The proposed amendment, which a committee of the National People’s Congress began considering in August, would reduce the number of crimes punishable by death from 68 to 55.

Crimes that would no longer warrant the death penalty include smuggling gold, silver, cultural relics and rare animals; forging or falsely selling tax invoices; teaching crime-committing methods; robbing ancient cultural ruins; and carrying out fraudulent activities with letters of credit or financial bills.

In fact, the death penalty is seldom used for these crimes and the changes would mostly reflect the current reality.

The death penalty will continue to apply to a range of non-violent crimes that are only vaguely described in China’s criminal code, including “attempting to split the state,” “revealing state secrets” and “subversion.” Crimes such as accepting bribes, making fake medicine and damaging public property would also remain punishable by death.


Currently, the vast majority of executions in China are for aggravated murder and large-scale drug trafficking.

Pi Yijun, a criminology professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, says that China should gradually reform its capital punishment laws so that the number of crimes punishable by death is reduced even further. But Pi argues that China, which is still undergoing rapid social transformation, “needs a powerful and effective penal system” that includes the death penalty.

The proposed changes are a good, if long overdue, first step, Pi says. “This is the first real amendment to reduce death penalty crimes since the enactment of China’s criminal law in 1979…. The number of crimes to be deducted accounts for nearly 20 percent of overall death crimes, which is a huge step but China remains way off international standards.”

Tang Jitian, a prominent advocate of freedom of speech whose law licence was suspended for defending members of the Falun Gong religious group, is an outspoken critic of the death penalty. He says the death penalty in not an effective deterrent to crime and that major reforms to China’s capital punishment laws are needed if China is to address its human rights record.

The proposed changes are a positive step, Tang says, “but I don’t think it is enough. As society develops, I think more (crimes) should be deducted from the list.”

The human rights group Amnesty International argues that the proposed changes will have little impact on the total number of people China puts to death.

Although the government does not reveal death penalty statistics, Amnesty International has estimated that China executes thousands of people each year, far more than the rest of the world combined. Many of those, the group argues, are put to death by the ruling Communist Party for political reasons.

This year, to protest against China’s policy of secret executions, Amnesty International refused to publish its estimate of the number of people put to death in China. But the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco-based human rights group, estimates that just under 5,000 people were executed in 2009.

In a paper published in July, Zhao Bingzhi, a professor at the College for Criminal Law Science at Beijing Normal University, called on the Chinese government to provide exact death penalty statistics so that the Chinese populace can supervise the death penalty system and its reform.

In China, public support for the death penalty remains high. According to a survey by Sina.com, China’s largest news portal, over 75 percent of Chinese were in favour of the death penalty, compared with 13.6 percent against.

Yang Jun, a 45-year-old securities broker in Beijing, says the proposed changes to the death penalty are a good step in China’s societal development, but that the punishment is necessary to deter serious crimes. “There will still be crimes in a civilised society,” he says. “I think the death penalty can shock criminals into not committing crimes.”

Jia Qi, 26, works in Beijing’s media and is opposed to the death penalty for all crimes but one: intentional murder. “The right to life is a basic right, which is protected by the constitution. Depriving a person’s life means depriving every other one of this person’s rights,” she says.

 
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