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China questions death penalty
(Beijing Today)
Updated: 2005-01-27 10:01
Powerful arguments over the possibility of abolishing the death penalty in
China have been voiced following the academic conference "the International
Symposium on the Death Pnalty" held last month at Xiangtan in Hunan province.
Legal experts at the conference argued that China would need to limit the use
of capital punishment when it ratifies the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, and that abolition was the mark of a "civilized society."
Professor Qiu Xinglong, the dean of the law faculty in Xiangtan University,
Hunan Province and a leading advocate for reforming the current death penalty in
China, claimed that as long as the law recognized that criminals were humans,
the criminals were entitled to live and the state and the law could not deprive
them of their right to life.
He also recalled why he decided to speak up for the abolition of the death
penalty by recalling spending time seeing a condemned 18-year-old in prison.
"At seven on the last morning, he was eating with me. An hour later, he was
on the execution field," said. "From that moment on, I have been haunted by this
question: why must we cruelly kill a fellow human being?"
In response, Zhang Jun, the deputy Minister of Justice, said the key issue in
China regarding the death penalty is to reform the punishment system.
He said the goal of the reform is to set up more long-term prison sentences
of 20 to 30 years and thereby to reduce the use of the death penalty.
China uses the death penalty for a wide range of crimes, from murder to
economic crimes such as corruption.
In 2001, Amnesty International recorded more than 4,000 death sentences and
nearly 2,500 executions in China.
Execution in China is usually carried out by a bullet to the head, and some
provinces are experimenting with using lethal injections.
Since Beijing News published details of the conference on Monday, a wide and
heated debate on whether to abolish capital punishment in China has taken place.
It's a topic which has spread well beyond the legal profession.
Zhang Jun, deputy Minister of Justice: the most feasible way to reform the
Chinese punishment system is to set up more long-term prison sentences.
Chinese criminal law takes account of both cracking down on crime and
maintaining human rights.
The focus of reforming the punishment system is not to abolish the death
penalty but to set up more long-term prison sentences, for example, 20 or 30
year sentences in order to reduce the use of the death penalty.
A survey by the Ministry of Justice last year found out that most serious
criminals who were sentenced to life imprisonment actually stayed in prison only
for 15 or 16 years before being released.
My suggestion is to make sure they stay in prison for at least 25 years and
then release them. A criminal who is released at 55 normally will not commit a
new crime.
When the long-term imprisonment system is set up, judges will be less likely
to resort to capital punishment.
I think that in the future, if the criminal law is going to be amended, the
legislature might remove capital punishment as an option in punishing certain
crimes.
Xia Qingwen, commentator with Xinhua.net: now's not the time to abolish the
death penalty.
We cannot talk about the death penalty without understanding Chinese culture
and the present situation.
The notion of "returning like for like" is rooted in China. The majority of
the public could not accept that some murderers could go free after 10 years’
imprisonment.
Until Western ideas on human rights and life have been popularized in China,
the abolition of the death penalty will not be supported.
The abolition of the death penalty would also result in a worsening public
security environment.
In fact, many countries have experienced a process of abolishing the death
penalty and then bringing it back again. For example, some areas of the United
States tried to abolish the death penalty in 1967.
But 10 years later, the public pressured the government to bring it back
after murder cases had increased dramatically.
Chantal Gill’ard a Dutch citizen with Diaspora International in Rotterdam:
the death penalty should be abolished.
I think no man has rights above others, especially over their life. It is
because the law, the judges and the judicial system can never be flawless. Many
people are wrongly put on death row.
Further we are living in a racist world, where not all persons are treated
equally. The best example is the US where in certain states, mainly the south,
most people on death row are of black origin.
So people do not necessarily bas their judgement on facts, sometimes they
base their judgement on their experiences and ideas. This makes the judicial
system somewhat fragile. We must acknowledge this and not apply the most extreme
punishment.
Finally, I do not think punishment heals the wounds of the victims. I do not
believe killing is the ideal punishment. There are alternatives.
Li Shu, cousin of a criminal who was sentenced to death four years ago in
Zhejiang Province: it's hard to take the death but our family was able to
cop.
My cousin was sentenced to death for rape, robbery and murder in Jinhua,
Zhejiang Province in 2001.
When he was alive, he caused a lot of troubles. As his relative, I felt that
people looked down upon me.
When he was sentenced to death, the atmosphere in our family was quite
depressing, but we were not that sad. I did not worry about him any more and
knew that most people would forget about him soon.
Still, his death left an everlasting pain in our family.
Dr. Liu Renwen, researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: the
death penalty has a number of side effects.
The worst side effect of China's death penalty is that it is an obstacle to
international and regional criminal judicial administration and coperation.
At present, the European Commission and some countries which have abolished
the death penalty forbid the extradition of criminals to their home countries if
they would face the death penalty there. For instance, Chinese smuggler Lai
Changxing fled to Canada.
Since he would be sentenced to death if he was delivered back here, Canada
has refused to extradite him.
Chen Xingliang, professor at Beijing University: the death penalty should be
abolished but it does not mean that we can abolish it tomorrow.
The abolition of the death penalty is dependent on two conditions, the
material civilization and the spiritual civilization.
When social productivity is improved, the country will be able to sustain the
cost of long-term imprisonment. Spiritual civilization refers to a society that
knows it is their duty to obey the law, so that the death penalty is no longer a
necessary deterrent.
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