Family members of a British man due to be executed this week for drug trafficking were expected to arrive in China yesterday in a last ditch attempt to plead for his life, a rights group said.
Akmal Shaikh, a 53-year-old father-of-three who supporters say suffers from bipolar disorder, faces execution tomorrow for drug smuggling after losing his final appeal in China’s Supreme Court.
Britain opposes the death penalty and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has repeatedly raised Shaikh’s case with China’s leaders and appealed for clemency.
Shaikh’s cousins Soohail Shaikh and Nasir Shaikh were scheduled to arrive in Beijing yesterday and transfer to a flight to western China’s Xinjiang region where the execution is expected to take place, the London-based legal aid group Reprieve said.
“Once there, they will deliver legal petitions seeking review of the case to the local court that originally imposed the death sentence, as well as the Supreme People’s Court,” a statement from the group said.
They will also deliver a plea of mercy to Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and the National People’s Congress, which receives petition’s for pardon or clemency, it said. The two cousins also hope to meet with Shaikh in the Xinjiang regional capital of Urumqi ahead of his scheduled execution, it added.
“We plead for his life,” Soohail Shaikh stated in the petition for clemency, “asking that a full mental health evaluation be conducted to assess the impact of his mental illness, and that recognition be made that he is not as culpable as those who might, under Chinese law, be eligible for the death penalty.”
Shaikh’s brother Akbar has already written to Fu Ying (傅瑩), Beijing’s ambassador to London, appealing for the Chinese authorities to show mercy.
Shaikh, from London, was arrested in September 2007 in Urumqi with 4kg of heroin. Campaigners say he was duped into carrying the drugs for a criminal gang.
If the death penalty is carried out, Shaikh would become the first national from a country that is presently a member of the EU to be executed in China in 50 years, Reprieve said.
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
ELITE UNIT: President William Lai yesterday praised the National Police Agency’s Special Operations Group after watching it go through assault training and hostage rescue drills The US Navy regularly conducts global war games to develop deterrence strategies against a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, aimed at making the nation “a very difficult target to take,” US Acting Chief of Naval Operations James Kilby said on Wednesday. Testifying before the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Kilby said the navy has studied the issue extensively, including routine simulations at the Naval War College. The navy is focused on five key areas: long-range strike capabilities; countering China’s command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting; terminal ship defense; contested logistics; and nontraditional maritime denial tactics, Kilby
RSS