Amnesty International yesterday urged China to accelerate reforms aimed at reducing use of the death penalty after a senior court official said new courts would be set up to review death sentences.
Last month Supreme People's Court (SPC) vice-president Wan E'xiang announced that three branch courts would be established to monitor death sentences, but said China was not about to abolish the practice.
Unnamed officials were quoted by state media as saying this could cut the number of executions by 30 percent.
China's law currently requires the Supreme Court to review every death sentence but amidst a rise in violent crimes some of this work was passed to high courts at the provincial level.
The provincial courts, however, review cases based on written reports instead of hearing the cases.
The government has been forced to act after a series of recent wrongful death sentences unsettled the public, which voiced concern about gross miscarriages of justice in a judicial system that goes largely unchecked.
Amnesty said China must go further.
"As a genuine step towards abolition, it must also be accompanied by other measures, including full transparency on the use of the death penalty nationwide and a reduction in the number of crimes punishable by the death penalty," it said in a statement.
The number of people executed in China remains a state secret although last year a senior member of the National People's Congress said around 10,000 people were executed annually, making China the world leader by far.
At least 26 people were executed ahead of the current National Day holidays.
According to London-based Amnesty, the death penalty remains applicable to around 68 crimes in China including non-violent offenses such as tax fraud, embezzling state property and accepting bribes.
The pressure group also voiced "deep concern" about reports that suggest organs are extracted from executed prisoners to be sold for transplantation.
Last month the Guardian newspaper reported that an unnamed Chinese cosmetics company was using skin harvested from the corpses of executed prisoners to develop beauty products.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of