Amnesty International yesterday called for a moratorium on the death penalty in China, saying the country's dysfunctional criminal justice system meant many innocent people were being executed.
The call in a new report entitled Executed according to law? comes a week after a senior Chinese legislator suggested China executes at least 10,000 people a year, about five times more than the rest of the world combined.
"In spite of positive developments in criminal procedure law, in practice the Chinese criminal justice system is in no condition to offer fair trials, impartiality, or justice," said the London-based rights group.
"It is unacceptable that thousands more people will be executed this year by a dysfunctional criminal justice system," it said.
Amnesty's report concluded that the Chinese government routinely abuses national laws and international standards in the course of executing thousands of people each year. It cites examples of miscarriages of justice which are "just the tip of the iceberg" and warrant an immediate moratorium on executions.
"This would be a first step towards the total abolition of the death penalty that the Chinese government has signalled to foreign diplomats is its ultimate goal," Amnesty said.
While China is notorious for its liberal use of the death penalty, it maintains that the number of people executed each year is a closely guarded state secret.
Executions have traditionally been carried out with a bullet to the back of the neck, but in recent years in the name of expediency the state has resorted to lethal injections administered in mobile execution vans parked outside court houses.
Amnesty's report traces the ordeal that a person in China goes through from being suspected of committing a capital crime through to execution.
It said that when detained in China on suspicion of committing a capital crime, no one has the absolute right to immediate legal counsel.
Only after being interrogated by police can they engage a lawyer, and even then the right is often denied or interfered with.
It is often during the first interrogation that people are tortured and forced to "confess," which can then be used as evidence against them in court, and used towards sentencing them to death, Amnesty said.
Additionally, contrary to international standards, there is no presumption of innocence in Chinese law while political interference can influence the judicial process, the report said.
It cited China's notorious `strike hard' campaigns, referring to China's frequent campaigns against crime, as putting courts under extreme political pressure to speedily pass ever heavier sentences.
"China must implement the international treaties it is already party to -- such as the Convention Against Torture -- and it must do everything possible to ratify and implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR] as a matter of urgency," Amnesty said.
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