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Farcical trials showcase weakness of Chinese legal system

AFP, BEIJING
Thursday, Aug 31, 2006, Page 9

Two controversial verdicts passed last week in China cast doubt on whether the government is committed to legal reform or sees the courts merely as convenient political tools, analysts say.

Zhao Yan(趙岩), a New York Times researcher, was jailed for three years on fraud charges last Friday, and the day before Chen Guangcheng　(陳光誠), a blind activist who exposed forced abortions and other abuses of the one-child policy, was sentenced to more than four years.

"It used to be two steps forward, one step backward. These days we see one step forward, two steps backward," said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based China researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Rights groups are concerned China's legal system will suffer yet another blow to its credibility when a verdict is announced, probably within the next days or weeks, in an espionage trial against Hong Kong journalist Ching Cheong(程翔).

All the trials have followed a similar pattern, which observers say makes a mockery of justice.

The court procedures have been swift, the family often barred from attending, and the defense frequently prevented from preparing anything resembling a proper case.

`Only bad sides'

"There are no good sides and only bad sides to the Chinese legal system," said Hou Guoyun (侯國雲), a law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law. "The [Chinese] Communist Party interferes at all levels of the legal system."

China's legal system is geared towards satisfying the needs of a political establishment deeply worried about the risk of unrest, observers said.

Tensions are worsening in the world's most populous nation not across one but several divides -- between rich and poor, city and countryside, and between the prosperous east and the less developed west.

China's only hope, as far as the leadership sees it, is to outgrow the problems, and in the meantime clamp down hard on dissenting voices.

"Instead of having a system that imposes certain procedures to protect the suspect, the legal system is used to frame, bring trumped-up charges and sentence people who are innocent," Bequelin said.

"[This happens] just on account of the embarrassment that they're causing the local government or the central government," he said.

For instance, Chen is widely seen as being punished for accusing authorities in Linyi city in Shandong Province of forcing women to be sterilized and have abortions as late as eight months into their pregnancy.

More fundamentally, the cases reflect the structure of the Chinese political system, with power concentrated in a Communist Party unwilling to share it.

The party will not tolerate any alternative center of authority, including the judges, according to Bequelin.

"I think that what it shows is that the party is not ready to put itself under the jurisdiction of the courts," he said.

Speedy trials -- Zhao's took eight hours, Chen's just two -- are a common characteristic of many of the cases.

Some analysts argue this is a relic of the traditional legal system where guilt had customarily to be established before the courts were even convened.

China is gradually moving away from this system, especially in more complex cases, hoping to adopt a system similar to the adversarial system of the West, where lawyers fight it out in court.

But many obstacles remain to be surmounted before rule of law can be realized in China.

These include the attitude of the local governments, who are generally more prone than bureaucrats in Beijing to resort to the abuse of judicial power.

One case in point was on the night before Chen's trial when his two lawyers were detained by police in his home county in Shandong.

The reason for hauling them in was allegations that they had stolen a handbag, a charge that observers found ridiculous.

"I think it's a great embarrassment for the central authorities and China as a nation to have something like that happen," said Randy Peerenboom, a law professor at University of California Los Angeles. "It seems preposterous, and certainly tarnishes China's image abroad."

Abuses

Local governments commit such abuses fairly often in China, and they do it in a public manner that makes it certain central government knows about it.

The only plausible explanation why this is allowed to go on is that an implicit agreement exists between Beijing and the local governments, Peerenboom argued.

The central planners expect the local authorities to assume an awesome array of responsibilities, from building bridges and hospitals to providing education and medical care, without supplying the necessary resources.

In return, the central government permits the local bureaucrats a great deal of leeway to solve their tasks, including cracking down on dissent in sometimes brutal ways.

"The central government says to the local government, `I want you to ensure growth and social stability and I'm not going to give you the resources to do this. So you're on your own. Go figure it out,'" Peerenboom said.

"Then it seems to me they're not in a position to then also say, `You have to follow all the rules,'" he said.
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