Published by: World Tibet Network News, Sunday, July 7th 1996

By Jane Macartney

BEIJING, July 4 (Reuter) - China defended on Thursday the hundreds of executions in its "Strike Hard" crime crackdown as essential to wiping out serious crime.

Sharp criticism by the London-based human rights group Amnesty International on Wednesday of more than 1,000 executions in the first two months of China's latest campaign to curb crime drew an angry response from Beijing.

"China's judicial organs handle cases independently and no group has the right to make irresponsible remarks," Foreign Ministry spokesman Cui Tiankai told a regular news briefing.

"China's 'Strike Hard' campaign on crime is to strike against serious criminals such as drug traffickers," Cui said in defence of the nationwide crackdown unveiled in late April.

Chinese authorities have held dozens of mass-sentencing rallies, parading convicted criminals in chains through the streets en route to execution grounds since the launch of the "Strike Hard" crackdown that targets a rising tide of crime.

Amnesty International urged China to halt the wave of what it called "state killing" and urged the international community to pressure Beijing to end the flood of death sentences.

The level of executions was unprecedented in China since a similar crackdown on crime in 1983 when diplomats said as many as 10,000 people were executed in just a few months.

Since April 28, China has reported tens of thousands of arrests and at least 1,000 executions, Amnesty International said, adding that the actual number could be much higher.

Many Chinese regard the death penalty as an essential deterrent to maintain order in a nation of 1.2 billion people.

A survey carried in the Information Industry newspaper on Thursday showed 20.2 percent of respondents wanted the death penalty with immediate execution for people who trade in babies and 36.2 percent called for jail terms of more than 10 years for such offenders.

"At present the crime of trading in babies is rampant," the newspaper said.

"The major reason is the influence of... feudal ideas with most people wanting a son," it said. "Some families that have no son buy baby boys from dealers and some even place orders with the dealers."

Many babies were kidnapped from poorer central provinces such as Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi and sold in wealthier coastal regions such as Guangdong and Fujian, it said.

Of those polled, more than 90 percent said a maximum penalty of three years for those who buy the children was too light.

Nearly 70 percent said they regarded the crime of abduction and sale of babies as a crime as serious as drug trafficking "because the trade in babies can ruin the life of the child and its parent for ever," it said.

China regularly executes drug traffickers. On June 26 it marked Anti-Drugs Day by convicting 1,725 people nationwide. It sentenced 769 of those to death and executed several hundred immediately, driving some to execution grounds in open trucks, handcuffed and shackled with a rope around their neck.

Executions in China are carried out with a single bullet, usually shortly after sentencing.

China executed 2,535 people last year and about 2,050 in 1994, according to Amnesty International estimates.

"Each year more people are executed in China than in the rest of the world put together," Amnesty said on Wednesday. "With the 'Strike Hard' campaign, China looks set to break its own record this year."

REUTER