Lai Xiaomin: Criticism of death sentence on former Chinese tycoon

Source: BBC News (6 January 2021)

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55555417

The death penalty handed out to a former Chinese finance chief found guilty of corruption has been heavily criticised by human rights groups.

Lai Xiaomin was arrested in 2018 on charges of taking 1.8bn yuan (£200m, $280m) in bribes over a 10-year period.

It is one of the most severe sentences to stem from President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive.

Human Rights Watch said "China is clearly taking a major step backwards."

Chinese officials said crimes committed by Mr Lai were during his time as chairman of Huarong Asset Management. The financial firm was set up in 1999 to to take bad debts off China's largest state-owned banks.

On Tuesday, a court in the northern city of Tianjin, said his crimes had "caused serious losses to the interests of the country".

"Imposing the death sentence on Lai Xiaomin for financial crimes, such as bribe taking, is outrageous and unacceptable and clearly violates China's commitments to respect international human rights standards," Phil Robertson, Deputy Asia Director at Human Rights Watch told the BBC.

'killing the chicken to show the monkeys'

Mr Robertson said the death penalty should be immediately commuted to prison time.

"By imposing this sentence, China is clearly taking a major step backwards on rights in what appears to be an effort to create fear among businessmen."

Human Rights Watch calls the tactic 'killing the chicken to show it to the monkeys' so it "makes an example of one person to instil obedience in all the others."

Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, added that President Xi "has little intention to end or slow down the campaign" to stamp out corruption.

Human Rights Watch added that it opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as "inherently cruel, and believes it violates of the right to life and fundamental dignity that all human beings possess."

The group has called on the Chinese government to impose an immediate moratorium on its use.

Cleaning up

Under Mr Lai's leadership, Huarong raised vast amounts of capital and expanded aggressively into investment banking services.

The asset management company which is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, also developed its own brokerage, insurance and leasing arms.

Caixin, a finance magazine in China, reported that 100 properties developed by a Huarong subsidiary in south China were distributed to Mr Lai's ex-wife and mistresses.

China's Communist Party has taken an increasingly tough stance on corruption among government officials and corporate executives, with more than one million punished.

In 2016, China raised the threshold for capital punishment related to corruption to 3m yuan from 100,000 yuan, but the penalty has seldom been used.

"China's leaders clearly continue to rely on the death penalty as a deterrent, but it seems they have a message to send to the broader public about their willingness to use it," Joshua Rosenzweig, head of Amnesty International's China team, told the BBC.

"If this signals a return to the so-called 'strike hard' approach to crime, then it could have really serious consequences for China," he added.

Mr Lai had previously worked at China's central bank and banking regulator.

China Sentences Former Bank Chief to Death in Rare Move

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald (6 January 2021)

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-sentences-former-bank-chief-to-death-in-rare-move-20210106-p56rzm.html 

Beijing: The former head of state-owned China Huarong Asset Management Co Ltd has been sentenced to death for bribe taking in one of the harshest punishments for economic crimes in recent years.

Lai Xiaomin, 58, was also found guilty by the Second Intermediate People’s Court of Tianjin of lesser charges including corruption and bigamy.

Life sentences and suspended death sentences commuted to life after two years are frequently handed down in corruption cases, but death sentences without the chance of reprieve have become rare in recent years. Such sentences are automatically appealed to China's highest court.

Lai was placed under investigation by the ruling Communist Party's corruption watchdog in 2018 and expelled from the party later the same year.

In its ruling, the Tianjin court cited the “especially enormous” size of the bribes Lai accepted, saying they exceeded 600 million yuan ($120 million) in one instance. In total, it said Lai collected or sought to collect 1.79 billion yuan over a decade in exchange for abusing his position to make investments, offer construction contracts, help with promotions and provide other favours.

He was also convicted of embezzling more than 25 million yuan in state assets and starting a second family while still married to his first wife.

Although Lai provided useful details about malfeasance by his subordinates, the seriousness of his bribe-taking and “degree of harm caused to society" were not enough to win him leniency, the court said in its ruling.

“Lai Xiaomin is lawless and greedy in the extreme," the ruling said. “His crimes are extremely serious and must be punished severely under law."

Huarong is one of four entities created in the 1990s to buy non-performing loans from banks, helping to revive the state-owned finance industry. Such asset management companies expanded into banking, insurance, real estate finance and other fields.

Lai was accused of squandering public money, illegally organising banquets, engaging in sexual dealings with multiple women and taking bribes, the anti-corruption agency said in 2018.

Investigators seized hundreds of millions of yuan in cash from Lai’s properties, the Chinese business news magazine Caixin reported in 2018.

Lai was one of hundreds of officials at government agencies, state companies and the military who have been detained in an anti-corruption crackdown launched in 2012.

Other senior officials snared in the crackdown include a former head of China’s insurance regulator.

China, Middle East dominate 2020 list of top executioners: Report

Source: Al Jazeera (21 April 2021)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/21/executions-death-penalties-continued-in-2020-amid-covid-report

While the year 2020 witnessed an overall decline in the number of global death penalties, some countries increased the number of executions they carried out.

In its annual global review of the death penalty, Amnesty International said that the unprecedented challenge of the coronavirus pandemic contributed to a trend of decline in global executions between January and December 2020. But authorities in 18 countries continued executing last year.

Amnesty relied on official figures, judgements, media reports and information from families, individuals and civil societies to collate data for its report titled Death Sentences and Executions in 2020.

Commenting on the findings, Agnes Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, said in a statement: “As the world focused on finding ways to protect lives from COVID-19, several governments showed a disturbing determination to resort to the death penalty and execute people no matter what.”

“The death penalty is an abhorrent punishment and pursuing executions in the middle of a pandemic further highlights its inherent cruelty,” Callamard said, adding that many people on death row were unable to access in-person legal representation under these conditions, which is considered “a particularly egregious assault on human rights”.

Although the figures in the report provided an overall reflection of the global breakdown of executions in 2020, they were on the lower end of estimates for many countries.

Data on the use of the death penalty is classified information in some countries, including China and Vietnam, whereas in countries like Laos and North Korea, little or no information is available due to restrictive state practices.

Top six executing countries

China is believed to be “the world’s most prolific executioner”, executing thousands of people each year, said the report.

But with Chinese authorities classifying the total number of death sentences and executions as state secrets, it is difficult to verify the exact number carried out.

After China, four Middle Eastern countries – Iran, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia – accounted for 88 percent of all known executions in 2020, said the report.

Iran came in as the second-highest global executioner with more than 246 executions carried out between January and December 2020.

Among those executed was journalist Ruhollah Zam, who was hung on December 12. He was once-exiled over his online work that helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017.

Coming in third was Egypt, which at 107 executions, tripled the number of yearly executions in 2020 compared with the year before.

The 2020 toll was the highest since the number of executions peaked in 2013, following the military overthrow in July 2013 of Egypt’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi. At least 109 executions were carried out in 2013, according to Amnesty.

Dozens of those executions were related to political violence. Many of the trials were marred by serious human rights violations, including torture and enforced disappearances, said the report.

The spike in executions in Egypt occurred between October and November when the government executed 57 people, including four women. Several human rights organisations decried the executions.

In fourth place, Iraq executed more than 45 people last year. That total was still less than half the number of executions carried out by the Iraqi authorities in 2019, said the report.

Several of those cases involved prisoners in terrorism-related crimes, who according to the United Nations human rights experts, faced trials that were unjust.

With at least 27 executions, Saudi Arabia was considered the fifth top global executioner in 2020, according to the report.

Despite this, the number of recorded executions in Saudi Arabia fell by 85 percent from 184 in 2019.

Criticism of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record has grown since King Salman named his son Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) as crown prince and heir to the throne in June 2017 and Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul in October 2018.

In a huge setback, the US became the only country in the Americas to carry out executions in 2020 after the Trump administration carried out the first federal execution in 17 years in July 2020.

And yet, in 2020, the US reached its lowest figure of executions in almost 30 years.

International law violations

Additionally, Amnesty recorded several executions that violated international law including one public execution and three people executed for crimes that occurred below the age of 18 in Iran.

In violation of international law, people with mental or intellectual disabilities were also put to death in countries including the US, Japan, the Maldives and Pakistan, said the report.

Meanwhile, many counties are believed to have imposed death sentences following proceedings that did not meet international standards for fair trials in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt and Singapore among others.

In China, Iran and Saudi Arabia at least 30 executions were linked to drug-related offences.

Lowest in decade

The total number of known global executions in 2020 was at least 483, said the report, which marked the lowest number of executions recorded by Amnesty in at least 10 years.

The figure represented a 26-percent decrease in the number of executions compared with 2019 and a 70-percent fall from 1,634 global executions in 2015. This drop was primarily linked to reductions in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, according to the report.

Furthermore, the number of known executing countries fell from 20 in 2019 to 18 in 2020.

At the same time, at 1,477 the report recorded a 36-percent decline in newly imposed death sentences in 2020 globally, compared with the previous year. According to the report, this decline was partly due to the coronavirus pandemic disrupting and delayed criminal proceedings globally.

No executions were recorded in several countries that executed people in the previous two years, including Afghanistan, Belarus, Japan, Singapore and Sudan.

Abolishing death penalty

Meanwhile, the US state of Colorado and Chad abolished the death penalty in 2020, which as of April 2021, brought the number of countries to have abolished the death penalty for all crimes to 108.

With Kazakhstan committing to abolish the death penalty and Barbados concluding reforms to repeal the mandatory death penalty, the number of countries that abolished it in law or practice reached 144.

“Despite the continued pursuit of the death penalty by some governments, the overall picture in 2020 was positive,” said Callamard.

“We urge leaders in all countries that have not yet repealed this punishment to make 2021 the year that they end state-sanctioned killings for good,” she added.

Taiwan passes laws to make Chinese spying punishable by death

Source: ABS-CBN News (9 May 2019)

https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/05/09/19/taiwan-passes-laws-to-make-chinese-spying-punishable-by-death

TAIPEI - Chinese spies will be subject to Taiwan's newly amended law under which they could face the death penalty, local media reported on Wednesday.

The legislature passed revisions to the penal code on Tuesday to stipulate that spies from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao committing acts of espionage could be punished by life imprisonment or even death.

Until now, Chinese spies have only been given light sentences.

Those include Zhen Xiaojiang, a retired People's Liberation Army captain who was found guilty in September 2015 of setting up a spy ring in Taiwan, but received only a four-year prison sentence for violating the National Security Act.

The legislature also approved amendments to the Classified National Security Information Protection Act on Tuesday to increase the penalty of Taiwanese citizens leaking or handing classified national security information to people from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao.

China and Taiwan have been governed separately since Nationalist forces led by Chiang Kai-shek lost a civil war on the mainland to Communist forces under Mao Zedong in 1949. Beijing considers Taiwan as a renegade province awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

==Kyodo

How Islamic does Brunei want to be?

Source: Asia Times (23 April 2018)

http://www.atimes.com/article/islamic-brunei-want/

When Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah first indicated in 2014 his oil-rich sultanate planned to implement sharia law, the announcement stirred waves of controversy, with Hollywood stars and rights activists calling for a boycott of the luxury Beverly Hills hotel owned by his sovereign wealth fund.

Four years on, however, the Muslim majority Southeast Asian state has yet to fully implement the harshest elements of the Islamic criminal code, including amputation or even execution for theft, apostasy, adultery and the deemed offense of sodomy.

While Hassanal, who rules as absolute monarch, prime minister and head of state religion, continues to call for the full implementation of sharia law, there has been little public explanation for the delay.

That’s led to certain speculation the sultanate is sensitive to outside perceptions, particularly as the nation courts more foreign investment – including from China – to help diversify its long dependence on energy revenues amid fast depleting supplies.

While nearby Malaysia and Indonesia also enforce laws that exclusively govern the conduct of Muslims, Brunei would be the first East Asian country to adopt strict sharia law at the national level.

Though some netizens had questioned or opposed the proposed Islamic legal code on social media when first announced, most people in the conservative sultanate are believed to support sharia legislation as an expression of religious and national identity.

The sultan, judging by his public speeches, views expressions of religiosity as a check on the Western influence of the internet and globalization broadly.

Though no organized opposition group has ever openly challenged the state’s religious stance, some observers believe the laws aim to placate Islamists who may otherwise be put off by the monarchy’s ostentatious displays of wealth.

Some analysts regard Brunei’s adoption of sharia law as a bid to attract more investment from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Situated between Asia’s largest Muslim majority countries, Brunei has long sought to become a regional hub for Islamic banking, finance and services.

While there is no evidence to suggest that sharia law influences the investment decisions of GCC countries, harsher Islamic laws would put Brunei’s legal and religious strictures closer in sync with Saudi Arabia and others.

In March last year, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud became the first Saudi monarch to visit Brunei. The brief appearance of the Saudi royal, who claims religious guardianship as custodian of Islam’s holiest sites, served to affirm the sultan’s own religious position and legitimacy.

While the introduction of sharia law may have sullied perceptions of Brunei in the West, China has moved to become the sultanate’s largest foreign investor in recent years. The Bank of China (BOC) established a branch in Brunei in 2016 to facilitate FDI, including ventures related to its global Belt and Road Initiative.

Major Chinese investments include the Muara Besar refinery and petrochemical complex, currently being built by China’s Hengyi Industries International Pte Ltd. The venture has employed thousands of Chinese construction workers in the sultanate.

Beijing’s investments in Brunei’s shipping, telecommunications and agriculture sectors, currently estimated at around US$4.1 billion and growing, have set the stage for Bandar Seri Begawan to become a regional outpost for Chinese businesses.

Chinese nationals and business people, however, could be reluctant to live under the punitive measures associated with sharia law. It remains to be seen whether the full implementation of Islamic law in Brunei complicates relations with China or deters private investment.

Sharia demands a high evidentiary burden of proof, such as the requirement of four pious men to witness personally an act of fornication to support a sentence of stoning, which would make cases of capital punishment rare.

Brunei’s legal system is based on British common law with a parallel sharia law system for Muslims that had largely governed custody rights and marital matters. Sharia’s jurisdiction was broadened in 2014 to include criminal law.

The first phase of the new penal code covers cases generally punishable by fines or imprisonment. The subsequent phases have yet to be implemented. Some reports attribute the delay to challenges faced by the country’s Kafkaesque religious bureaucracy.

The implementation of full sharia law can only take effect following the gazetting of a Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), a document articulating all rules and prosecutions associated with sharia as a guide for their implementation.

Brunei’s ruler has publicaly lambasted the country’s religious affairs ministry, which is tasked with drafting the CPC, for the delays. Hassanal lamented how the CPC draft process seemed to “drag on without completion” in remarks to local media in 2016.

“The challenges of fundamentally transforming judicial and enforcement structures may have been underestimated,” writes Dominik Müller, a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Islamic Legal Studies Program.

The sultan’s “public criticism against the CPC’s slow finalization exemplifies how in the absence of an opposition or independent civil society, he plays that role now as well,” he says, noting, “the Sultan is his government’s sharpest critic.”

A draft of the sharia CPC was recently announced for gazetting in lieu of last month’s Legislative Council, the country’s annual session of parliament, indicating a possible end to the ongoing legal impasse.

The second phase is slated to take effect 12 months after the CPC’s enactment, while the third and final phase will begin after 24 months. Barring any further delays, this would put Brunei on track to fully enforce sharia law by 2020, four years later than first envisaged.

Non-Muslims comprise some 21.2% of Brunei’s population, according to US Central Intelligence Agency statistics, while 65.7% are ethnic Malays who practice Islam.

Though ethnic and religious minorities in Brunei generally refrain from open dissent, some hold private reservations about harsher forms of sharia law due to human rights concerns and impacts on commercial activity.

All restaurants in Brunei, including Chinese restaurants and those catering to non-Muslims, are required to close during Friday prayers and are limited to providing take-away services to adhere to fasting during the month of Ramadan.

Regulations restricting traditional Chinese lion dance performances have also come into effect. Public celebrations of Christmas have been curbed since 2014, when the new penal code’s first phase first came into force.

Brunei’s sharia courts say the number of filed cases in 2017 had dropped to 148 from 259 in 2016. Around 66% of sharia offenses pertain to khalwat, or intimate contact between unmarried couples.

Hassanal, 71, marked 50 years in power last October with a golden jubilee procession through the capital Bandar Seri Begawan. The sultan’s advocacy of Islamic criminal law has prompted observers to question why such measures had not been introduced in the earlier years of his reign.

Most interpret the move as a means of legitimizing the monarchy’s political power amid sluggish economic growth and dwindling oil and gas reserves threaten the sultanate’s high standard of living.

An eventual succession will see Brunei’s Crown Prince Al-Muhtadee Billah take the throne as the next sultan. The prince has characterized Brunei’s sharia compliance as a “competitive edge” in efforts to transform the sultanate into an Islamic finance hub.

Only a small number of governments have actually implemented the sort of punishments that Brunei has in mind, says Chandra Muzaffar, a Malaysian political scientist and Islamic reform activist.

“Ruling elites in certain Muslim countries champion certain forms of punishment such as amputations and the like which resonate with the masses’ understanding, or rather misunderstanding, of Islam,” Chandra says.

“They do not want to emphasize the essence of the faith such as accountability and human dignity, which may undermine their own position.”

China sentences 10 people to death in sports stadium as thousands watched

Source: The Independent (18 December 2017)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-public-execution-sports-stadium-10-people-thousands-sentence-dead-a8116906.html

Thousands of people at a sports stadium in China watched as 10 people were sentenced to death before being taken away for execution.

The public sentencing was held in Lufeng, in southern Guangdong province, where 12 people were held on charges of producing and trafficking drugs, murder and robbery.

Video footage from the stadium showed those on trial being brought into the stadium in police trucks with their sirens blaring.

They were flanked by four police officers wearing dark sunglasses.

Seven of the 10 who were executed were convicted of drug-related crimes, The Paper reported, while the others were found guilty of murder and robbery.

After being convicted, they were taken to be executed.

Local media reports are unclear on what happened to the other two people.

It marks the second time in six months an open trial has been held at the sports stadium in Lufeng. In June, eight people were sentenced to death.

While China does not publish statistics on how many people receive the death penalty each year, Amnesty International estimated it killed "thousands" of people last year.

Schapelle's home, but 170 Australians are in jail or facing charges overseas for drug crimes

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald (28 May 2017)

http://www.smh.com.au/national/more-than-500-australians-in-jail-or-facing-charges-overseas-for-drugrelated-crimes-20170527-gwejqw.html

Nearly one third of the 545 Australians currently imprisoned or facing charges overseas were convicted or arrested for drug-related crimes, according to the latest figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Many are in countries where conviction on drug charges may attract the death penalty.

DFAT figures on open consular cases show that as of May 24, 102 (or 41 per cent) of the 246 Australians languishing in overseas jails were convicted on drug charges, and 68 (or 23 per cent) of the 299 Australians arrested overseas were arrested on drugs charges. They come as convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby returns to Australia, having completed her sentence in an Indonesian jail.

While Corby's is perhaps the most high-profile case of an Australian facing the death penalty, a Fairfax Media analysis shows that since 1980 at least 92 Australians have been charged with crimes that attract the death penalty.

Of these, 33 were handed a death sentence, although 20 of these were later commuted to life sentences. Six have been executed, including Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran who faced a firing squad in Indonesia in 2015. One death row inmate in Thailand, Donald Tait, had his conviction overturned in 1988.

The remaining six are on death row or were on death row at last report. Three are in Thailand and Vietnam: Antonio Bagnato, convicted of murder in Thailand in February this year; and Tran Minh Dat and Pham Trung Dung, separately convicted in Vietnam in 2014 on heroin trafficking charges.

A further three on death row in China have had their sentences suspended: Henry Chhin, who was handed a the death penalty suspended for two years in 2005 and whose whereabouts is unknown; Bengali Sherrif, understood to have been given the death penalty suspended for two years in 2015; and Anthony Bannister, who received a suspended death sentence in 2015. All three were convicted for trafficking ice.

Also included in the 92 are three Australians either awaiting trial or a verdict: Peter Gardner and Ibrahim Jalloh are in China and Maria Pinto Exposto is in Malaysia. All three were arrested in separate cases in 2014, on charges of trafficking methamphetamine.

These figures, based on media reports, underestimate the true number of Australians held on charges that could attract the death penalty.

Separate numbers, obtained through freedom of information laws, hint at the sizeable gap between the two data sets. They show that since 2015, Australian Federal Police have assisted in nearly 130 foreign investigations involving more than 400 people, where a successful prosecution could potentially lead to a death sentence.

"That's an extraordinary number," said Stephen Blanks, President of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties. "If that's correct then publicly-sourced information is only scratching the surface."

Amnesty International's latest report on the death penalty, released last month, highlighted the secrecy surrounding the use of capital punishment in countries such as China, Vietnam and Malaysia.

As many as a dozen Australians – including Sherrif, Bannister, Gardner and Jalloh – are believed to be held in a single city in southern China, Guangzhou, putting estimates of the number of Australians on or facing death row as high as 17.

"China keeps its grotesque use of the death penalty a 'state secret', but our research shows that thousands of people are sentenced to death and executed each year," said Amnesty International Australia's Rose Kulak.

"China executes more people than all other countries in the world put together."

In 2016, at least 1032 people were executed worldwide, excluding in China, according to the latest Amnesty International figures.

DFAT annual reports tracking statistics on Australians arrested overseas for any offence show the rate of arrest rose to its highest level in six years in 2015-16, with 15.2 arrests per 100,000 departures. The largest number of arrests were in the US (262), followed by Thailand (107) and the United Arab Emirates (100).

"DFAT has long provided clear and consistent messaging to Australians that they must respect the laws of the countries in which they work, live or travel," a departmental spokesperson said.

Mr Blanks said the death was not appropriate for any crime, for "many reasons apart from the barbarity".

"There is always the possibility that errors in the judicial process have been made. There is always the possibility that criminals can reform themselves – and the examples of the two Australians executed in Indonesia, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, stand out in that regard," he said.

"In practice, the death penalty operates in a discriminatory way against those least able to defend themselves. Typically, it will be the drug mules that are caught and executed, rather than the organisers of the drug trade."

Amnesty flags China’s non-transparency on ‘capital offenses’

Source: Asia Times (11 April 2017)

http://www.atimes.com/article/amnesty-flags-chinas-non-transparency-capital-offences/

Lack of transparency in relation to enforcement of terrorism and drug laws in China is identified as a growing area for concern by Amnesty International in a report published today.

‘China’s Deadly Secrets’, a companion to the organization’s annual report on capital punishment around the globe, notes that the country has sought greater diplomatic, military and law enforcement co-operation from other countries in its attempts to combat terrorism and stem the drug trade. However it flags a lack of understanding internationally as to how the law is applied in such cases as a concern.

Charges of “terrorism” or “extremism” are cited as a possible smokescreen for broad persecution of religious minorities and individuals who criticize the Chinese government. The authors also note that drug-related offences do not belong to the category of “most serious offences” to which the death penalty should be restricted under international law.

Amnesty’s annual report reveals that China remains the top executioner in the world, with thousands killed by authorities each year.

The human rights NGO says China executed thousands of people in 2016, more than all the other countries around the world put together. However, the true extent of the use of the death penalty in China “still remains unknown” as the data is kept secret.

Excluding China, 23 states around the world executed a total of 1,032 people in 2016, a 37% decrease from the 1,634 in 2015, when the organization recorded the highest number of executions in a single year since 1989. Other countries making up the world’s top five executioners in 2016 were Iran (at least 567), Saudi Arabia (at least 154), Iraq (at least 88) and Pakistan (at least 87).

Despite the significant year-on-year decrease, the overall number of executions in 2016 remained higher than the average recorded for the previous decade, Amnesty said.
Breakdown of death executions, excluding China. Source: Amnesty International

New disclosures in Vietnam and Malaysia also found that the numbers of executions in those countries were higher than previously thought. Vietnam executed 429 people from August 6, 2013 to June 30, 2016. The figures were first revealed in Vietnamese media in February 2017, making the country secretly the world’s third biggest executioner over the last three years, according to Amnesty.

“The magnitude of executions in Vietnam in recent years is truly shocking. You have to wonder how many people have faced the death penalty without the world knowing it,” said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International at the launch of the report in Hong Kong. “This conveyor belt of executions completely overshadows recent death penalty reforms.”

While unable to arrive at a conclusive figure for China, the report exposes hundreds of death penalty cases missing from its national online court database. Amnesty counted at least 931 reports of executions in China’s public news media from 2014 to 2016; however only 85 of them were recorded in the state database.

“How many people are executed in China every year and how they are executed remains completely unknown,” said Nicholas Bequelin, Regional Director for East Asia at Amnesty International. “This really stands in contrast with what the government is claiming in recent years.” The online database is touted as the government’s “crucial step towards openness” and evidence that the country’s judicial system has nothing to hide.

The database contains only “a tip of an iceberg” in relation to the thousands of death sentences that Amnesty International estimates are handed out every year in China, Bequelin said. The organization is “calling on the Chinese government to come clean, and disclose the actual level of capital punishment,” he added.

The total number of death sentences reported in 2016 (as opposed to executions carried out) jumped to 3,117 in 55 countries, exceeding the record-high total of 2,466 in 2014. The increase was mainly led by spikes in 12 countries including Bangladesh, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The organization’s improved ability to obtain credible data on countries such as Thailand is cited as having contributed to the higher overall figure.

'Alarming' executions in Vietnam: Amnesty

Source: The Australian (11 April 2017)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/alarming-executions-in-vietnam-amnesty/news-story/12cd7b02b61d356865c56651e4b90ad4

Secrecy around executions continues to plague some Southeast Asian countries, with newly released figures showing the "disturbing" use of the death penalty in Vietnam, Amnesty International says.

At least 1032 people were executed worldwide in 2016, while at least 3117 were sentenced to death, according to Amnesty International's global report released on Tuesday.

The figures, while alarming, are considerably less than the reality because they exclude the thousands of executions believed to have taken place in China.

This secrecy continues to plague some countries in Southeast Asia.

Like China, Amnesty says Vietnam continues to classify figures on the death penalty as state secrets.

However, according to the report, new information obtained this year reveal executions have been carried out at a higher rate than previously understood.

In February 2017, Vietnam media reported statistics by the ministry of public security showing 429 people had been executed between August 2013 and June 2016, at an average rate of 147 executions a year.

"(This) placed Vietnam over a three-year period as effectively the third-biggest executioner in the world," Amnesty International's deputy director of global issues, James Lynch, told AAP, putting it behind China and Iran.

The figures raise as many questions as they answer - with no context provided as to what people were executed for, when they took place or the details of their cases' legal proceedings.

"Secrecy is a huge concern, not only Vietnam but also Malaysia ... when new information comes to light it is disturbing, the number of executions were higher again than people had expected. The size of death row was higher than expected," Mr Lynch said.

"There needs to be a much more structured program of transparency about the imposition of the death penalty to allow for a more informed debate."

Also of concern in the region were calls by the Philippines government to reintroduce the death penalty as a measure to tackle crime and threats to national security.

It's a step backward for Southeast Asia, where the Philippines has been a key abolitionist.

China says it uses death penalty sparingly

Source: The Japan Times (12 March 2017)

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/03/12/asia-pacific/crime-legal-asia-pacific/china-says-uses-death-penalty-sparingly/#.WMfSXPnyvIU

BEIJING – China’s chief justice said Sunday that his country, which is believed to execute more people than the rest of the world combined, gave the death penalty “to an extremely small number of criminals for extremely serious offenses” in the past 10 years.

The actual number of executions in China is a state secret. A 2007 decision that all death sentences must be reviewed by the Supreme People’s Court is believed to have reduced the number of executions dramatically.

Chief Justice Zhou Qiang said in his report to the national legislature that the court has “strictly controlled and prudently applied” the death penalty, without giving any figures.

Dui Hua, a U.S.-based rights group that focuses on legal justice, estimated that about 2,400 people were executed in 2013, one-tenth the number in 1983. It said that, according to its sources, the number of annual executions remained largely unchanged in 2014 and 2015.

China can punish 46 crimes with the death penalty. It is typically given in cases of murder, rape, robbery and drug offenses.

Zhou also said Sunday that over the coming year, courts will use the law to severely punish crimes of harming state security and violent terrorism “to resolutely safeguard the country’s political security.”

Jia Jinglong: Chinese villager executed despite campaign

Source: BBC News (15 November 2016)

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37985339

The execution of a Chinese villager - despite widespread calls to commute his sentence - has drawn criticism from those who say this country's courts have one way of handling the powerful and a different way of handling the poor.

In early May 2013, Jia Jinglong was preparing for his wedding day.

He wanted to have the ceremony at his family home in Hebei Province, not far from Beijing in northern China.

However, just prior to the big day, his house was knocked down to make way for a new development.

Adding to his woes, his fiancee then called off the wedding and he reportedly lost his job.

Jia Jinglong felt it was all too much. He sought revenge for the upheaval in his life following the destruction of his house without proper compensation.

In February 2015, he took a nail gun and went looking for the village chief, the man he decided was to blame. Then the groom-to-be-no-longer shot and killed the chief, 55-year-old He Jianhua.

For this he was sentenced to death.

Class and injustice

In accordance with the rules governing all death penalty cases, his went to the Supreme Court for ratification. It was cleared to proceed.

There has been a major public campaign to have his death sentence commuted because of extenuating circumstances. Even some newspapers controlled by the Communist Party have been arguing that he should be spared.

But now word has come through from an official social media account run by the Shijiazhuang Intermediate People's Court: Jia Jinglong has been executed.

Some outside China will be wondering why the general public and Chinese media might have felt the need to campaign for somebody who admitted to murdering his local Communist Party secretary.

Well it all comes down to class and injustice in modern China.

These types of forced demolitions are routine here. It would be hard to argue against the premise that for years this country's central government has turned a blind eye while property developers, in league with corrupt local officials, have bulldozed people's houses, using paid thugs to beat up villagers if they try to resist.

It is a way of clearing out pesky residents which continues to this day.

The "compensation" paid is usually nowhere near enough to buy an apartment in the same area, forcing evicted families to move to distant, low-grade housing estates.

How can I say this so confidently? Because I've seen it first hand time and again. I've seen the houses being destroyed, I've seen the crying families and I've seen the men sent in to silence them.

Ask pretty much any China correspondent and they will tell you the same thing.

'Pushed into a corner'

We are constantly approached by desperate people claiming their homes have been effectively stolen and destroyed. The BBC could do a story on one of these cases in a different location every week if we wanted to.

Because this is seen here as such a widespread abuse of power against the lao bai xing (the ordinary punters) there has been a view that - while murder is not to be condoned - Jia Jinglong was pushed into a corner; that the crimes against him should have meant commuting his death sentence to some lesser penalty.

After all, people will tell you, government officials and those in the upper echelons of society are saved from a lethal injection for much less.

These cases are posing a real problem for the Communist Party in terms of perceived legitimacy, especially when its reason for monopoly power is supposed to be delivering a more just world for the downtrodden.

In 2009, a 21-year-old woman working as a pedicurist in a hotel building was on a break, washing some clothes.

Attached to the hotel was a massage and entertainment complex called Dream Fantasy City. Offering food, drink, massages, karaoke and often prostitution, these types of establishments are popular with government officials.

When a local Communist Party figure approached Deng Yujiao asking her to stop washing her clothes and instead provide him with "special services" he fully expected to get his way.

She told him she didn't do that kind of work there. It's said he then took a wad of cash from his pocket and started slapping her on the face with it. He then pushed her onto a lounge and got on top of her. To defend herself she stabbed him four times with a small knife. One of the blows struck him in the neck, causing the director of the local township's business promotions office to bleed to death on the spot.

Deng Yujiao was charged with murder.

Her case drew huge waves of support from Chinese people using the Internet to campaign in her favour. To many, she was seen as a hero. Finally somebody was standing up to these small-town, corrupt and arrogant officials.

The social media posts were censored but the momentum could not be stopped.

Prosecutors dropped the murder charge and granted bail. She faced a lesser charge of "intentional assault" but was never sentenced. This was apparently due to her mental state.

There are considerable parallels in these two cases but certainly not in one respect.

Despite the public outcry there was to be no sparing Jia Jinglong.

His crime was committed in the new era of President Xi Jinping. Justice now appears to be more hardline and the Communist Party remains well and truly in charge of the courts and all that takes place inside them.

China court finds man executed 21 years ago innocent

Source: Straits Times (2 December 2016)

http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-court-finds-man-executed-21-years-ago-innocent

BEIJING (AFP) - China's top court on Friday (Dec 2) cleared a man executed 21 years ago for murder - more than a decade after another man confessed to the killing.

The case of Nie Shubin, who was 20 years old when he faced a firing squad in 1995 after being convicted of rape and murder, is the latest miscarriage of justice in the Communist-ruled country.

"The Supreme People's Court believes that the facts used in the original trial were unclear and the evidence insufficient, and so changes the original sentence to one of innocence," it said in a statement on a verified social media account.

Chinese courts have a conviction rate of 99.92 per cent, and concerns over wrongful verdicts are fuelled by police reliance on forced confessions and the lack of effective defence in criminal trials.

Overseas rights groups say China executes more people than any other country, but Beijing does not give figures on the death penalty, regarding the statistics as state secrets.

Nie was convicted of raping and murdering a woman whose body was discovered by her father in a corn field on the outskirts of Shijiazhuang city, in the northern province of Hebei.

But the time, method and motive for the murder could not be confirmed, and key documents related to witnesses and the defendant's testimony were missing, the supreme court said.

The "primary evidence was that Nie Shubin's confession of guilt corroborated the other evidence", but "there are doubts over the truth and legality of his confession of guilt", the statement added.

Nie's family had been campaigning for justice since a serial murderer arrested in 2005 confessed to the killing. But the case was only formally reopened in 2014.

"Thanks to all those who helped on Nie Shubin's case!" his mother, Zhang Huanzhi, 72, said on social media.

The Hebei high court, which convicted and executed Nie, "expressed deep, deep regrets" to his relatives and would investigate "possible illegal problems related to the trial" soon, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Villager’s Execution in China Ignites Uproar Over Inequality of Justice

Source: New York Times (20 November 2016)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/world/asia/villagers-execution-in-china-ignites-uproar-over-inequality-of-justice.html?_r=0

BEIJING — Zhou Yunfei, a technology executive who owns a villa in eastern China, did not have much in common with an impoverished farmer more than 500 miles away who was convicted of murdering a village chief with a nail gun.

But when Mr. Zhou heard last week that the Chinese government had executed the farmer, Jia Jinglong, he was furious. He saw it as a sign that the ruling Communist Party was imposing harsh punishments on the most vulnerable members of society while coddling the well-connected elite.

“The legal system isn’t fair,” Mr. Zhou, 57, said, adding that local officials had “turned against the common people.”

President Xi Jinping has made restoring confidence in Chinese courts a centerpiece of his rule, vowing to promote “social justice and equality” in a legal system long plagued by favoritism and abuse. Since coming to power in 2012, he has led a high-profile campaign against corruption, ensnaring thousands of low-level officials and even some of the party’s most senior leaders.

But the furor over the execution of Mr. Jia, who had sought revenge on officials for demolishing his home, has raised doubts about Mr. Xi’s efforts, with people across the country publicly assailing inequities in the justice system and asking why high-level officials often escape the death penalty.

“The perception is that the people are powerless and vulnerable against corrupt officials,” said Fu Hualing, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. “What is surprising is that Xi Jinping has been in power for four years, and that narrative has not changed.”

The uproar has placed the party, which is working to tighten its grip on courts while promoting the idea of fairness, in an awkward position.

Mr. Xi has cultivated an image as a champion of the people willing to take on corrupt officials of any stripe. Yet Mr. Jia’s case has reawakened concerns, especially among rural residents and members of the urban working class, that the Communist Party is protecting its own members.

In fiery social media posts and dinner-table conversations, some have argued for making punishments against corrupt officials more severe. Others have suggested that China, believed to be the world’s top executioner, should substantially reduce its use of the death penalty against impoverished citizens.

China’s leaders seem conflicted about how to respond to complaints of unfair treatment, which have plagued the judiciary for decades but have taken on new urgency as Mr. Xi attempts a top-to-bottom overhaul of the system.

On the one hand, party leaders might be wary of exacerbating the anger felt by many Chinese people, who often side with villagers like Mr. Jia, seeing them as folk heroes standing up against venal forces.

At the same time, Beijing might not want to be seen as endorsing an attack on a government official. And some party leaders may not like the idea of setting a precedent for using the death penalty against senior officials, at a time when critics of Mr. Xi say he is using the anticorruption campaign to go after political enemies.

“There’s a strong incentive for the elite within the party to protect itself,” said Jerome A. Cohen, a New York University law professor. “People realize today they’re free, but tomorrow they could be the targets.”

In recent days, the party’s hesitation has seeped into public view. The government at first appeared to tolerate, and even encourage, debate about Mr. Jia’s case. Lawyers issued open letters pointing to flaws in the prosecution’s argument, and state media outlets published sanctimonious editorials calling for the court to show humanity.

But as discontent spread on social media in the days leading up to Mr. Jia’s execution, the government reversed course and began censoring some online discussions about the case.

State-run media organizations adopted a scolding tone, warning that public opinion had “hijacked” the case. People’s Daily, the party’s flagship newspaper, went a step further, arguing that citizens should not express contrarian views about court cases in public.Photo

Zhou Yongkang, China’s former security chief, was sentenced to life in prison last year for taking bribes and revealing state secrets. Critics of the judicial system say officials often escape harsh punishment.CreditCCTV, via Associated Press

“We can see that online public opinion can deviate from reason and even become a terrifying tool that kills humanity and conscience,” an editorial in the newspaper said.

While the government has historically tolerated some debate about judicial decisions, Mr. Xi has generally sought to rein in dissent, especially when it gathers force online.

Li Wei, an activist in Beijing who was imprisoned for two years under Mr. Xi for helping organize protests demanding financial disclosures from party leaders, circulated a four-page petition online in late October calling for Mr. Jia to be spared and for the government to adopt a “more humane” justice system.

Soon his cellphone was buzzing with messages from university students, professors, security guards and others. He gathered 1,274 signatures over a few days, he said, before the authorities shut down his social media accounts.

“The so-called anticorruption campaign is not genuine,” Mr. Li, 45, said in an interview at a Beijing teahouse. “The reason why they were doing this is because they want to salvage the Communist Party regime.”

Chinese leaders appear to be working to counter perceptions that officials are being treated with kid gloves. Over the past year, party leaders have vowed to consider punishing officials who commit grave crimes, including stealing more than about $436,000, with the death penalty. They have also introduced new forms of punishment aimed at corrupt officials, including lifetime jail sentences without the possibility of parole.

But the government has yet to systematically invoke any of those punishments against prominent officials. And critics can point to a raft of recent cases in which powerful people and their families escaped the death penalty.

There is the example of Zhou Yongkang, China’s former security chief, who was sentenced to life in prison last year for taking bribes and revealing state secrets; he was the most senior leader to be jailed for corruption in more than 65 years of Communist rule.

And many people note the case of Gu Kailai, the wife of one of China’s most prominent politicians, whose death sentence for the murder of a British business associate was commuted to life in prison last year.

Fan Zhewang, 42, a teacher of Maoism at Xi’an University of Posts and Telecommunications in central China, said the treatment of Ms. Gu epitomized the inequities in the system.

Mr. Fan said that while the government’s decision to execute Mr. Jia was legal, he was concerned that a lingering sense of injustice and resentment among villagers would prompt more violence against officials.

“In the future,” Mr. Fan said, “I worry that people will just kill whole families of village chiefs.”

On Wednesday, a day after Mr. Jia was executed, a farmer in Yan’an, a northwestern city celebrated as a stronghold of the Communist revolution, was arrested and charged with killing a village official and several of his relatives, according to local reports. The man was said to be angry after officials seized his land.

In the days after the execution of Mr. Jia, friends and relatives in his village in the northern province of Hebei circulated a poem he wrote while in prison in which he described being in a dreamlike state. “I’ll miss the smell of flowers,” he wrote, “and the serenity of grass, something I love.”

Villagers said they did not want to talk about the case anymore. A man who gave his last name as Li said residents had grown accustomed to suffering injustices at the hands of wealthy government officials.

“Who do you turn to in order to vent your anger?” he said. “There’s no one we can seek help from.”

“Many people are angry,” he added, “but we don’t dare speak up.”

China sets death penalty threshold for graft cases

Source: The Japan Times (18 April 2016)

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/04/18/asia-pacific/crime-legal-asia-pacific/china-sets-death-penalty-threshold-graft-cases/#.VxUUNjB97IU

BEIJING – Corruption cases involving 3 million yuan ($463,000) or more may incur the death penalty in future, Chinese authorities ruled Monday, signalling that officials could be executed for graft.

Under President Xi Jinping the country has waged a much-publicized anti-corruption campaign vowing to target both powerful “tigers” and low-level “flies,” but no Communist Party official is known to have been put to death for the offense since Xi took office.

The Supreme People’s Court and China’s national prosecuting body said that bribes or embezzlement totalling 3 million yuan or more will be considered “extraordinarily huge value,” the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Such offenders will be eligible for the death penalty if their actions had “extremely severe circumstances and caused extremely vile social impact and extremely significant losses to the state’s and the people’s interests,” Xinhua cited their joint “judicial explanation” as saying.

Capital punishment will remain an option for the courts — which in China are controlled by the ruling party — and will not be mandatory.

The intent was to punish corruption “with severity according to the law,” Xinhua said.

Supreme People’s Court judge Pei Xianding said judicial authorities would hand down death sentences “in a resolute manner,” Xinhua reported separately.

A previous threshold was set in 1997 at 100,000 yuan, but was not updated until it was abolished last year.

Xi’s crackdown has swept up scores of senior officials in the party, the government, the military and state-owned companies, including former security czar Zhou Yongkang.

So far its most severe sentences have been death with a two-year reprieve — which is normally commuted to a life term — or life imprisonment, which Zhou was given.

Former railways minister Liu Zhijun was given a suspended death penalty in 2013 for taking bribes worth 60 million yuan, which was commuted to life imprisonment last year.

The document also widened the range of benefits that can be defined as bribes, to include debt forgiveness among others, the report said.

Any acceptance of gifts by government employees that might affect the performance of their public duties will be regarded as bribery even if there was no specific request by the briber at the time, it said.

Amnesty death penalty report: The secret China won’t share with the world

Source: news.com.au (6 April 2016)

http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/amnesty-death-penalty-report-the-secret-china-wont-share-with-the-world/news-story/f8c406c3301992b28bbfc5d6f8e2eb51

Asian nations are continuing to put thousands of people to their deaths every year.

Yet while the rest of the world is abolishing the death penalty, China and North Korea refuse to reveal how many people it executes each year.

China claims its figures are a state secret while North Korea remains uncooperative with human rights organisations.

Information surrounding its figures remain so tight that the world can only sit back and guess how many people they put to death every year.

Once again Asian powerhouse China has been named as the world’s biggest executioner in Amnesty International’s Death Sentences and Executions 2015 report.

In releasing the annual report this morning, the human rights group said it was impossible to obtain an exact figure on the number of people China has executed, but it is believed the figure is in the thousands, and is more than all the other countries in the world combined.

Amnesty International Australia spokesman Rose Kulak said the group obtained a rough figure based on non-government agencies, families who’ve had bodies returned to them and activists on the ground.

Ms Kulak, Individuals at Risk Program Coordinator at Amnesty, told news.com.au said the main issue at hand was China’s lack of transparency.

“There is close to 50 crimes that people can get executed for,” she said.

“These crimes include things like embezzlement which in Australia would amount to jail time.”

China was also named as the world’s top executioner in 2014, with Amnesty estimating it was at least 1000 — a conservative figure, and one it believes is much higher.

However this year’s report did note, there are indications that the number of executions has decreased since the Supreme People’s Court began reviewing the implementation of the death penalty in 2007.

NOT ALONE

China was not the only nation in the spotlight.

The rogue nation of North Korea was also criticised for its lack of transparency and refusal to co-operate with human rights organisations, or release figures surrounding its execution rates.

Amnesty said it continued to receive reports, which it could not independently verify, indicating that executions were carried out and death sentences imposed for a wide range of alleged offences including questioning the leader’s policies.

However, according to media reports, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has executed 70 officials since taking power in late 2011 in a “reign of terror” that far exceeds the bloodshed of his father.

In 2013, Kim executed his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, for alleged treason. Jang was married to Kim Jong-il’s sister and was once considered the second most powerful man in North Korea.

More recently, South Korean media outlet Yonhap News agency reported 15 high-ranking officials were executed in North Korea prior to April.

Last August, it also reported Vice Premier Choe Yong-gon and Defence Minister Hyon Yong-cool had been executed in May by shooting.

Ms Kulak said it was also a concern that Pakistan, another country in our region, has resumed executions on a massive scale, with 320 killed last year alone.

She said the government’s reasoning of a terror crackdown on militants simply wasn’t justified.

THE BIG OFFENDERS

The number of executions recorded in Iran and Saudi Arabia have increased by 31 per cent and 76 per cent respectively, and executions in Pakistan were the highest Amnesty International has ever recorded in that country, the report found.

Pakistan recorded a massive rise in executions after lifting a moratorium on civilian executions in December 2014.

More than 320 people were put to death in 2015, the highest number Amnesty International has ever recorded for Pakistan.

Iran put at least 977 people to death in 2015, compared to at least 743 the year before — the vast majority for drug-related crimes.

In Saudi Arabia, executions rose by a whopping 76 per cent compared to 2014’s figures, with at least 158 people being executed last year.

According to Amnesty, most were beheaded, but authorities also used firing squads and sometimes displayed executed bodies in public.

The United States came in next for mention.

For the seventh consecutive year, the US was the only country to execute across the Americas, carrying out 28 executions, the lowest number since 1991 and seven less than the year before.

METHOD

The following methods of executions were used across the globe.

Beheading, Saudi Arabia; hanging, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Sudan, Sudan; lethal injection China, USA, Vietnam as well as firing squad.

DEADLY GLOBAL RISE

In the report, Amnesty noted a dramatic global rise in the number of executions recorded last year which saw more people put to death than at any point in the last 25 years.

The surge was largely fuelled by three countries including Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which accounted for almost 90 per cent of all recorded executions.

Excluding China, at least 1634 people were executed in 2015, 573 more than recorded the year before.

According to the report this represents a rise of more than 50 per cent and the highest number Amnesty International has recorded since 1989.

Amnesty International’s Secretary-general Salil Shetty said the rise in executions was profoundly disturbing.

“Not for the last 25 years have so many people been put to death by states around the world,” he said.

“In 2015 governments continued relentlessly to deprive people of their lives on the false premise that the death penalty would make us safer.

“Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have all put people to death at unprecedented levels, often after grossly unfair trials. This slaughter must end.”

According to Amnesty, in almost all regions of the world, the death penalty continued to be used as a “tool by governments to respond to real or perceived threats to state security and public safety posed by terrorism, crime or political instability.”

This was despite the lack of evidence that the death penalty is any more of a deterrent to violent crime than a term of imprisonment.

Mr Shetty said the major upside of the report was that for the first time ever, the majority of the world’s countries were abolitionist for all crimes after four more countries abolished the death penalty last year.

Congo (Republic of), Fiji, Madagascar and Suriname repealed the death penalty during the year.

“2015 was a year of extremes. We saw some very disquieting developments but also developments that give cause for hope. Four countries completely abolished the death penalty, meaning the majority of the world has now banned this most horrendous of punishments,” Mr Shetty said.

The report found five of the 53 member states of the Commonwealth were known to have carried out executions including Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Singapore.

Japan and the US were the only countries in the G8 to carry out executions with 28 and three respectively.

At least 20,292 people were under sentence of death worldwide at the end of 2015.

PUNISHMENT AND CRIME

According to the report, several nations, including China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, put people to death for crimes.

This included for economic crimes such as corruption (China, North Korea and Vietnam); armed robbery (Saudi Arabia); adultery (Maldives, Saudi Arabia); aggravated circumstances of rape (India), rape (Afghanistan, Jordan, Pakistan); apostasy (Saudi Arabia); kidnapping (Iraq); kidnapping and rape (Saudi Arabia); insulting the prophet of Islam (Iran).

Amnesty said these did meet the international legal standards of “most serious” to which the use of the death penalty must be restricted under international law.

Man cleared of murder after over 20 years in jail

Source: Straits Times (2 February 2016)

http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/man-cleared-of-murder-after-over-20-years-in-jail

SHANGHAI • A man jailed in China more than two decades ago for murder has been acquitted, the latest in a series of wrongful convictions overturned in the country.

Mr Chen Man, who is now 53, was released yesterday from Meilan Prison in south China's Haikou City, in Hainan province, after the Zhejiang Higher People's Court overturned his conviction.

Mr Chen was arrested in 1992, accused of burning down a house in Haikou in which a man died. Stab wounds had been found on the neck and body of the victim and the police later arrested Mr Chen, who is from Sichuan province, for the alleged murder, the China News Service reported.

Mr Chen was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve by Haikou Intermediate People's Court in November 1994.

However, the local procuratorate deemed the sentence "too light" and urged a higher court to adjust it to a death sentence and execute Mr Chen, according to the Zhejiang court. The procuratorate's request was rejected by the Hainan Higher People's Court in 1999, beginning a 16-year appeal ordeal for Mr Chen and his family.

China's top court ordered Mr Chen's case to be re-opened in April last year after he appealed, and the Zhejiang Provincial Higher People's Court retried the case.

Mr Chen Man was convicted solely on the basis of confessions which were "inconsistent" during two trials which convicted him, court judge Zhang Qin said in a statement yesterday.

Yesterday, the High Court of China's eastern Zhejiang province pronounced him not guilty due to "lack of evidence".

"His role in the murder is not clear and the original judgment lacks evidence, therefore, the guilty verdict cannot be confirmed," the Zhejiang court said in its statement.

It said Mr Chen had the right to apply for state compensation.

The president of Hainan Provincial Higher People's Court bowed to Mr Chen after the announcement, the state-run China Daily reported.

The case is the latest highlighting miscarriages of justice in China, where forced confessions are widespread and more than 99 per cent of criminal defendants are found guilty. Mr Chen was convicted solely on the basis of confessions which were "inconsistent" during two trials which convicted him, court judge Zhang Qin said in a statement yesterday.

The government has tried to improve the way courts handle cases of miscarriages of justice following efforts by President Xi Jinping to bolster the rule of law and increase public confidence in the legal system. Wrongful executions have stirred particular outrage, though the death penalty itself remains popular.

Of those exonerated in recent years, Mr Chen spent the longest time in prison, state media said.

For some others, the new verdicts have come too late.

A court in the Inner Mongolia region in 2014 cleared a man named Hugjiltu, who was convicted, sentenced and executed for rape and murder in 1996 at the age of 18.

The declaration of innocence came nine years after another man confessed to the crime.

Twenty-seven officials in China have been "penalised" for his wrongful execution, state news agency Xinhua reported late on Sunday. But only one person will face criminal prosecution, Xinhua said, with 26 others face lighter "administrative penalties".

China officials punished over wrongful execution of teen

Source: BBC News (1 February 2016)

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35457033

Twenty-seven Chinese officials have been penalised for the wrongful execution of a teenager, state news agency Xinhua said.

Huugjilt was 18 when he was convicted of the rape and murder of a woman in a factory's public toilet in 1996.

A serial rapist confessed to the crime in 2005 and Huugjilt was formally exonerated in 2014.

Acquittals are extremely rare in China and it is even rarer for convictions to be overturned.

Twenty-six officials were given "administrative penalties, including admonitions and record of demerit", Xinhua said citing an official statement on Sunday.

Feng Zhiming, the other penalised official, was suspected of other crimes related to his job and was being investigated, according to the report.

The murder happened during an anti-crime drive and detectives in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region admitted being under pressure to secure a conviction. The use of force to get confessions is thought to be widespread in the country.

Huugjilt's parents were given 30,000 yuan ($4850; £3080) as an expression of the court's sympathy, when the conviction was overturned.

China prisoners on death row to get free legal aid

Source: Asia One (16 September 2015)

http://news.asiaone.com/news/asia/china-prisoners-death-row-get-free-legal-aid

Convicted criminals on death row will be entitled to free legal representation under a new rule drafted by the Ministry of Justice, a ministry source told China Daily.

The ministry will assign lawyers to condemned prisoners who cannot afford one during the review of their sentences to ensure equal access to justice, according to the source.

The source said officials from the ministry and the high court are "finalizing some detailed implementation measures and the rule will be released in the next few months".

The source asked not to be identified because she was not authorised to discuss the draft plan with the media.

Under Chinese law, all death sentences must be reviewed by the Supreme People's Court before defendants can be executed. Currently, defendants who cannot afford to hire lawyers are not guaranteed representation during a death penalty review.

Che Xingyi, a lawyer at Beijing's Yingke Law Firm, which specializes in representing clients in death penalty cases, said the top court conducts reviews based on files from local courts and lawyers' previous defence statements.

This method has limitations and is not sufficient to ensure justice, Che said.

It is "more than necessary" to offer legal aid during a review of a death sentence, he said. "If the lawyers discover flaws in sentencing criteria or new evidence, they will fully defend the suspects and communicate with the judges quickly to stop imminent execution."

China does not reveal the number of prisoners on death row.

However, last year, Chinese lawyers provided free legal aid to nearly 40,000 suspects facing life imprisonment or the death penalty, a year-on-year increase of 7 per cent, according to the ministry.

The new rule follows a recent meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, which stressed the importance of legal aid and was attended by the country's top leaders.

Paul Dalton, team leader for the China-EU Access to Justice Program, which was created to strengthen equality of justice in China especially among disadvantaged groups, recommended that Chinese judicial authorities be cautious when imposing the death penalty.

The top court would better protect prisoners' rights by holding public hearings during a death penalty review, Dalton said.

This would enable judges to listen to defence arguments by defendants and their lawyers instead of just reading the files.

UN experts call for abolition of death penalty in India

Source: Gulf News India (13 September 2015)

http://gulfnews.com/news/asia/india/un-experts-call-for-abolition-of-death-penalty-in-india-1.1582758

United Nations: UN human rights experts have welcomed recommendations made by India's Law Commission to abolish death penalty with the exception of terror offences and called on Indian authorities to move towards the complete abolition of capital punishment.

"The conclusions and recommendations of the Indian Law Commission represent an important voice in favour of the abolition of the death penalty in India," Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns said.

"I encourage the Indian authorities to implement these recommendations and to move towards the complete abolition of the death penalty for all offences," he added.

The Indian Law Commission issued its report on August 31, concluding that the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent and recommended its abolition for all crimes, except terrorism-related offences and waging war.

The Commission had been tasked by the Supreme Court to study the issue of the death penalty in India.

In its report, the Indian Law Commission recognised that, while on death row, the prisoner "suffers from extreme agony, anxiety and debilitating fear arising out of an imminent yet uncertain execution," and that "the death row phenomenon is compounded by the degrading and oppressive effects of conditions of imprisonment imposed on the convict, including solitary confinement".

The recommendation by the 9-member panel was, however, not unanimous, with one full-time member and two government representatives dissenting and supporting retention of capital punishment.

Special Rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez said the Indian authorities should review the findings very carefully and ratify the law.

The experts also welcomed the decision to reduce the number of crimes subject to death penalty by China.

China amended several provisions of its Criminal Law, replacing death penalty with life imprisonment for several offences, including smuggling of weapons, ammunition, nuclear materials and counterfeit currency; obstruction of duty of police; and creating rumours during wartime.

"By adopting these amendments to its criminal code, China has made progress in the right direction; this needs to be encouraged," the UN experts noted.

"These new developments in India and China are in line with the general trend towards the abolition of the death penalty at a global level, even if there are isolated moves in the opposite direction," Heyns said.

Special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme.

Chinese Law makers vote for abolition of Death Penalty for 9 more Crimes

Source: LiveLaw.in

http://www.livelaw.in/chinese-law-makers-votes-for-abolition-of-death-penalty-for-9-more-crimes/

National People’s Congress, the top law making body of Republic of China today adopted amendments to the Criminal Law, abolishing death penalty for nine more crimes.  Ninth amendment of criminal law was passed after a six-day bimonthly session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee. After this amendment crimes for which death penalty is a possible punishment stands reduced to 46. The amendment will come in force from November 1, 2015.

Now, according to the reports by Chinese media, death penalty cannot be awarded for the following crimes, anymore

1. Smuggling weapons
2. Smuggling ammunition
3. Smuggling nuclear materials
4. Smuggling counterfeit currency
5. Counterfeiting currency
6. Raising funds by means of fraud
7. Arranging for or forcing another person to engage in prostitution
8. Obstructing a police officer or a person on duty from performing his duties;
9. Fabricating rumours to mislead others during wartime.

It is the second time China has reduced the number of crimes punishable by death since the Criminal Law took effect in 1979. In 2011, China had ended death penalty for 13 economic crimes such as smuggling cultural relics, gold and silver; carrying out fraud related to financial bills; forging or selling forged exclusive value-added tax invoices; teaching criminal methods; and robbing ancient cultural ruins.. Even after the present amendment, there are still more than 45 varieties of crimes are punishable with death penalty in China. The   Article 48 of China’s Criminal Law says “The death penalty is only to be applied to criminal elements who commit the most heinous crimes. In the case of a criminal element who should be sentenced to death, if immediate execution is not essential, a two-year suspension of execution may be announced at the same time the sentence of death is imposed”. Death penalty cannot imposed on minors and pregnant women. However, it is a possible punishment for sexual crimes in China.

 In China, It is said that it executes more people a year than rest of the world combined. Last to be executed was reportedly a Chinese billionaire mining tycoon Liu Han is executed over his links to a ‘mafia-style’ gang.