- 08/09/01
NOVE ESECUZIONI IN UNA SOLA GIORNATA
PECHINO
- Nove condannati a morte sono stati giustiziati a
Pechino nella sola giornata di ieri per reati come furto, stupro e
omicidio: lo scrive oggi il ''Gionale delle donne cinesi''. La
Cina, che non ha mai fornito dati certi o statistiche sull'applicazione
nel paese della pena di morte, ha gia' compiuto almeno 1800 esecuzioni a
partire dall'aprile scorso, quando e' stata lanciata la campagna ''colpire
duro'' contro la criminalita'. L'organizzazione
Amnesty Intenational, che desume le esecuzioni dai diversi giornali locali
cinesi, stima che tale cifra sia superiore al totale delle esecuzioni
effettuate nel resto del mondo negli ultimi tre anni.
- 09/09/01
Torture Hurries New Wave of Executions in China
By CRAIG S.
SMITH - China, which routinely executes more people than
all other countries combined, is in the midst of its third great wave of
executions in the last quarter century. HEFEI, China Liu Minghe paused in
a hospital room here to let a nurse take his blood pressure, which had
surged dangerously in the few minutes since he began talking about how he
had won his freedom from China's death row.
After
she left, he begged off recounting in greater detail the torture that he
said had led him to confess to a murder he did not commit.
"Let's
just say it was `forced interrogation and confession under duress,' "
Mr. Liu said, his speech slurring slightly because he is missing several
of his lower teeth, which he said had been knocked out during his
five-year incarceration.
Mr.
Liu has been recuperating in a hospital in Hefei, 560 miles south of
Beijing, since winning his release last month after having been sentenced
to die in 1996 in one of China's "strike hard" campaigns, a
frenzied national effort to purge the land of lawbreakers.
He
managed to overturn his conviction on the grounds of insufficient evidence,
thanks largely to his former Communist Party membership, his family's
relatively high social position, and money. But many other people who are
wrongly convicted and condemned to die in China may not be so lucky.
China
routinely executes more people than all other countries combined. This
year, though, has been far from routine. Without much notice at home or
abroad, the government has begun sending unknown thousands of people to
execution grounds, often after they have been tortured into confessing
crimes that to foreigners seem minor.
Today
China is in the midst of its third great wave of executions in the last
quarter century, a campaign in which as many as 191 people have been
executed in a single day, according to the state news media. Since
President Jiang Zemin announced the crackdown in April, at least 3,000
people have been executed, and double or even triple that number have been
sentenced to death. The pace of executions shows no sign of abating.
The
wrongful conviction of Mr. Liu, and others like him, suggests that by the
time the campaign ends in 2003 dozens if not hundreds of innocent people
will have died in the capital punishment spree.
These
periodic nationwide crackdowns, in response to rising crime and concerns
about weakening social order, place huge pressures on the local police to
solve crimes quickly, which they often do by extorting confessions through
torture. In Hunan Province, newspapers recently reported that the police
solved 3,000 cases in two days in April. Police in Sichuan Province
reported that they had solved 6,704 cases, including 691 murders,
robberies or bombings, in six days that same month.
The
campaigns also pressure the courts to try the accused quickly, record the
maximum possible number of convictions and show little mercy in sentencing.
Convictions
are sometimes handed down within days of arrests. Appeals are processed
briskly and executions are normally carried out within an hour after a
sentence is confirmed. Usually, just a few months pass between an arrest
and execution, occasionally only weeks.
The
monthly tally of death sentences has become a kind of grim score card
showing how each province is doing. But the real numbers remain a closely
guarded secret. They are believed to be far higher than the confirmed
tally, which has been compiled from press reports by people like Catherine
Baber, a researcher at Amnesty International based in Hong Kong, or a
Western diplomat in Beijing who does not want to be named.
Many,
if not most, executions are not reported in the press at all. And many of
the reports that are published simply say that a "group" of
people were executed on a given day. A group can include anywhere from a
few people to dozens. Amnesty International usually counts each group as
just two.
Neither
Ms. Baber nor the diplomat will venture to guess what the true number of
executions might be. But both agree that this year's total will probably
surpass 5,000. Some observers say the number could reach as high as
10,000.
It
is also impossible to say how many of the people executed might be
innocent.
Signs
of Wrongful Justice
Certainly,
many of them have been ordered to die for crimes, like bribery, that would
earn them only brief jail terms in the West. But several wrongful
convictions, like Mr. Liu's, have recently come to light, suggesting that
many among the condemned are not guilty at all.
Mr.
Liu, 63, married and a former associate professor at a technical institute
in Wuhu, Anhui Province, was arrested during China's last great sweep in
1996, for the murder of Tao Ziyu, who was reputed to be his lover.
Her
body was found floating shoeless in a shallow lotus pond not far from his
campus residence. She had been strangled by someone's left hand, the
police concluded.
An
elderly woman reported seeing a woman arguing with a man near the pond
shortly after Ms. Tao was last seen alive, visiting a friend who lived
nearby. Mr. Liu, who is right handed, protested his innocence and said he
could account for his whereabouts at the time.
But
just before the end of the three-month period that police are allowed to
hold suspects, Mr. Liu says they plunged him into brutal, round-the-clock
interrogations.
His
wife says he was handcuffed to a window so he had to either stand or hang
from his wrists. She says he was only allowed to eat a few bites of food
by lowering his head to a bowl. A document submitted to the court by his
lawyers said that Mr. Liu had not been allowed to drink or close his eyes
during the interrogation.
The
police told him the questioning would continue for 10 days and that if he
did not confess he would probably be executed, and offered him a lighter
sentence if he did, according to his lawyers.
On
the third day, Mr. Liu broke. In the videotaped confession, which his wife
has seen, interrogators did most of the talking while a dispirited Mr. Liu
answered "yes" to the scenario they presented.
Suspects
in China are not allowed legal counsel, or any contact with the outside
world while under interrogation. Mr. Liu's wife says her husband disavowed
the confession as soon as he was allowed to see a lawyer.
"I
couldn't bear it," she said he told the lawyer. "If I didn't
confess, I would have died."
Despite
the lack of physical evidence and Mr. Liu's alibis, the Wuhu Intermediate
People's Court found him guilty of murdering Ms. Tao based on his
videotaped confession. On Dec. 30, 1996, he was sentenced to death.
Mr.
Liu appealed his conviction and his family enlisted the help of a legal
expert from Beijing who focused on, among other inconsistencies in the
prosecution's case, Mr. Liu's alibi and the coroner's estimated time of
Ms. Tao's death.
A
higher provincial court sent Mr. Liu's case back for a retrial in Wuhu,
which found Mr. Liu guilty a second time but reduced his sentence to life
in prison.
Retrials
Without Limit
There
is no limit in China to how many times a case can be retried, and Mr. Liu
appealed his case twice more before the provincial court overturned his
conviction. Before he was finally released on Aug. 8, his wife had nearly
lapsed into despair. "I have no tears left to cry," Ms. Wang
said in an interview in July, squatting in her small living room, her
knees bearing thick, plum-size scabs left from kneeling outside the
courthouse to plead for her husband's life.
During
the five years he was jailed, Mr. Liu says he was held in a series of
200-square-foot rooms crammed with as many as 26 people. He slept on
boards or on the floor. He was rarely allowed outside and given few
opportunities to exercise. For 16 months both his hands and feet were
shackled, he says. He saw about 30 people sent to their deaths.
"My
four limbs could barely move," he said last week, sitting in the
hospital room, his white hair recently died black in an attempt to erase
the wasted years. He said he collapsed shortly after he was released from
prison and has since been hospitalized with severe diabetes and high blood
pressure.
Mr.
Liu might be dead today had not his longtime Communist Party membership
and social position encouraged the provincial court to look more carefully
at his case, his family and lawyers say. Money also helped. Mr. Liu's
family has spent more than $36,000 on his defense, an enormous sum here.
But
the vast majority of people executed in China have neither position nor
money and their cases often get less scrutiny than Mr. Liu's, defendants'
lawyers say.
Part
of the problem is that Chinese prosecutors rely less on physical evidence
than confessions to win convictions. According to a recent state press
report, a government investigation found 221 cases of confessions extorted
in six provinces during a two-year period ending in 1999. In 21 of those
cases, the prisoners were tortured to death.
Even
if the prisoner shows signs of abuse, prosecutors rarely question how the
confessions were obtained.
Du
Peiwu, a policeman in Yunnan Province, was released from death row last
November after a group of car thieves confessed to shooting his wife and
another police officer in April 1998, crimes for which Mr. Du had been
convicted despite a clear alibi and lack of physical evidence linking him
to the murders.
During
his trial, he dramatically stripped off an outer layer of clothes to
reveal the tattered garments in which he said he had been beaten, hung by
his handcuffed wrists and shocked with a cattle prod to force his
confession. The judges ignored his claim, according to press reports after
he was freed.
Though
forced confessions are technically illegal, the country's Public Security
Ministry whose local bureaus are charged with investigating crimes rewards
officers who extract confessions, while usually only lightly punishing
those whose abuse goes too far.
The
two policemen who tortured Mr. Du into confessing were sentenced last
month to suspended one- year and one-and-a-half year sentences
respectively.
Compounding
the problem is an untrained and politically beholden judiciary.
Judges
in China are not required to have any legal training, and few do. Most
hold their positions because they have close connections with local
government officials, who are eager for quick convictions.
"Veterinarians,
drivers, anybody can get that job if they have good relations," said
He Xing, a lawyer who teaches at the North China University of Law in
Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province.
People
have been executed in recent months for everything from tax fraud to drug
trafficking to stealing diesel fuel.
In
China's far western province of Xinjiang, where a small but persistent
separatist movement percolates among the mainly Muslim population, people
have been shot for "separatism," according to local newspaper
reports.
Similarly
intense spates of executions have played a grisly role in China's
political upheavals over the last half century. In the first few years
after the Communist Party came to power, as many as five million people
were put to death, most after summary trials by makeshift tribunals.
A
Third Wave of Executions
This
year is the third surge in executions since the end of the 1966- 1976
Cultural Revolution.
The
first came in 1983 when Deng Xiaoping announced the first "strike
hard" campaign. Large white posters bearing the names and crimes of
the condemned were pasted in public places across the country. Western
observers estimated that more than 10,000 people died that year. The
second "strike hard" campaign, the one that swept up Mr. Liu,
began in 1996.
These
periodic crackdowns and the widespread use of execution have received
broad popular support in China, despite the likelihood of wrongful
convictions.
A
1995 academic survey of 2,661 people found that fewer than 1 percent were
in favor of abolishing the death penalty, while more than 90 percent
thought there should be more.
Their
opinions are colored, however, by underreporting of executions in the
press and the government's secrecy about the annual total.
With
increasing frequency, prisoners are formally arrested or sentenced at
public rallies. Nearly two million people attended such rallies in Shaanxi
Province in April and May. On June 25, more than 5,000 people attended a
rally in Hubei Province, at which 13 people were sentenced to death, 8 of
whom were executed immediately.
The
condemned are normally paraded through town on the beds of open trucks,
before being driven to the execution ground, often trailed by a caravan of
onlookers.
Usually
at an open field outside of town, the prisoners are made to kneel and are
then shot at point blank range in the back of the head. Their organs are
sometimes removed on the spot by medical staff and rushed to nearby
hospitals for transplant operations.
The
condemned are not allowed to see their families before they die. Once they
are picked up for questioning, they never speak to a loved one again.
Often,
the family does not even learn of the final sentence until the execution
is over and they are notified to collect the prisoner's ashes from a
crematory.
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