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February 5, 2015

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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views

Death penalty reforms show human rights progress

By Liu Junyang | February 5, 2015, Thursday | Print Edition

Recently, China announced two big reforms related to the death penalty.

First, on November 3, 2014, the National People’s Congress (NPC) released a draft Amendment Nine to the Criminal Law for public review, which proposes eliminating nine crimes punishable by death. And second, starting from January 1, 2015, China has banned transplanting organs from executed prisoners. These reforms demonstrate progress on human rights.

There are 300,000 people requiring organ transplants in China each year, but only 10,000 operations are performed due to the extremely scarce resources.

The huge gap between supply and demand has fueled a rampant black market for illegal organ trafficking. For decades we have relied on organs harvested from executed prisoners.

Although it has saved many lives, it undermines human dignity. Former vice health minister, Huang Jiefu, said this was “not a proper source.”

Huang is now in charge of reforming the organ-transplant system.

In the 1970s, some executions were carried out publicly. I witnessed an execution in a small city in China’s northeast. The temporary execution ground resembled an open-air theater, with people sitting as an audience.

After the shooting, a group of medical personnel rushed in, moved the body to a medical van and sped away.

In 1980, the first Criminal Procedure Law banned public executions. Under Article 155 it reads: “Death penalty should be announced publicly but the execution should not be carried out publicly. The public should not be allowed to view it.”

In the 1994 bestseller “The Chamber,” written by American novelist John Grisham, a young lawyer tries his best to save his grandfather, a racist facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. His grandpa finally changes from unrepentant to feel “terribly remorseful for the things he’d done,” but this doesn’t prevent his execution in the gas chamber.

USA Today commented that the book was “compelling ... powerful” and “will make readers think long and hard about the death penalty.” Grisham is a strong advocate of abolishing the death penalty. “I think the system is so badly flawed that all executions should be stopped,” he told the Kansas City Star in 2007.

Wrongful executions happen in nearly all countries that use capital punishment, though it was not sure whether Grisham’s “case” involved wrongful execution. Huugjilt, a young worker in China wrongfully executed in a controversial rape and murder case 18 years ago, was recently exonerated.

No place in the 21st century

“The death penalty has no place in the 21st century,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at a panel hearing in July 2014. Today, out of 193 member states of the UN, more than 160 have either abolished the death penalty or do not practice it.

Many times Karl Marx discussed the cruelty of execution. He wrote: “It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to establish any principle upon which the justice or expediency of capital punishment could be founded in a society glorying in its civilization.”

It seems naive and unrealistic to hope for abolition of the death penalty right now, both in the US and China. But there’s something unique in China death penalty system. Death penalty in China falls under two categories: death sentence and death sentence with a two-year reprieve. The latter is far more common.

Death sentence with a two-year reprieve is a unique criminal punishment in China. It gives the convicted inmate a two-year suspended sentence of the execution. The convict will be executed only if found to intentionally commit further crimes during the two years. Otherwise, the sentence will be reduced to life or a fixed term in prison if the person has performed deeds of merit. Now, with the latest reforms, China is treating death penalty with even greater caution.

The writer is an associate professor in the culture and communications department and a research fellow of the Sino-Denmark Joint Research Center on China and International Relations, University of International Relations. Johnliu1963@yahoo.com. The views are his own.

Chinese Views


 

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