- The introduction of mobile execution vans, in which condemned
prisoners are put to death by lethal injection, has been hailed in Chinese
media as "a more humane method of dispatch".
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- Last Thursday afternoon, two farmers from Yunnan province
convicted of heroin trafficking "benefited from the latest advance
in China's judicial system", the Beijing Today newspaper reported.
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- Earlier that morning, Yunnan's legal authorities held
a work conference on the death penalty at which they approved the use of
18 specially converted vans, to be distributed among the province's 17
intermediate courts and its high court. Shortly afterwards, farmers Liu
Huafu, 21, and Zhou Chaojie, 25, died peacefully within one minute of receiving
their fatal shots in one of the new vans, which in photographs look like
ordinary police vans except that they are emblazoned with the word "Court".
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- The normal execution method in China is a bullet by firing
squad to the back of the head, but lethal injection has been allowed since
a revision of the criminal code in 1997. Yunnan chose the vans on the grounds
of efficiency and cost: in a very big province, they bypass the logistical
difficulties of transporting prisoners to execution grounds.
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- "With lethal injection, only four people are required
to execute the death penalty: one executioner, one member of the court,
one from the procuratorate and one forensic doctor. A dozen guards are
also required to keep watch around the van," the paper said.
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- "In contrast, many more guards are needed for firing
squads, both around the site and along the route from the prison. If the
case is well-known and complicated, security needs to be further enhanced
and extra expenses are incurred."
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- Yunnan Provincial High Court president Zhao Shijie was
quoted as saying "the use of lethal injection shows that China's death
penalty system is becoming more civilised and humane". But Professor
Wang Shizhou of Beijing University said it was a "very sad development".
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- "You can say it is a positive development compared
with a gunshot, but you can also say it is a negative development. It will
encourage executions," he said.
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- In China there are 320 listed criminal offences, of which
68 - or about one in seven, including many white-collar crimes - are punishable
by death. In recent months, a cautious public debate has begun in which
scholars and legislators have expressed concern about the likelihood of
wrongful executions. At a conference on the death penalty late last year,
the removal of economic crimes from the list of offences punishable by
death was proposed as a first step towards abolition of the death penalty.
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- China has never revealed how many prisoners are executed
each year, but it is estimated at about 10,000.
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- Since 1998, a total of 819,000 Chinese have been either
condemned to death or jailed for more than five years, the president of
China's Supreme Court said this week.
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- This was a 25 per cent increase on the previous five
years, said Xiao Yang in his annual report to the National People's Congress,
China's parliament. Including lesser crimes, there were altogether 3.2
million people convicted.
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- The number convicted for economic crimes was almost 70
per cent higher than in the previous five years.
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- http://theaustralian.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,6119850%5E2703,00.html
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