The New York Times

Wednesday, August 27, 1997

China Lead In Executions

Amnesty International Cites "Arbitrary " Standards of Justice

By Seth Faison

New York Times Service

BEIJING. In one case, a man in Sichuan Province was executed for stealing 14 cows.

In another, two men were sentenced to death for the theft of a car they sold for $1,200.

In a third, a man was put to death for repeatedly vandalizing strips of electric cable. The vandal, Chen Guangru, may have caused serious damage to public property, but his real mistake was getting caught during a nationwide anti-crime campaign last year that stressed severity and speedy punishment above all.

Chinese authorities sentenced more than 6,100 people to death in 1996

and carried out at least 4,367 executions, asserts Amnesty International, a human rights organization based in London, in a report to be released Tuesday.

"Throughout the 1990s, more people have been executed or sentenced to death in China than in the rest of the world put together," the report said.

A detailed chronicle of the way the death penalty is applied in China, the report describes how Chinese officials used a political-style campaign to get tough on criminals, ending up with a broad array of standards for execution. The report was based on public accounts made during the crackdown.

A spokesman for the Justice Ministry in Beijing said that relevant officials were in a meeting all day and could not immediately comment.

Officially, the anti-crime campaign was intended to send a message to outlaws that the authorities would not passively tolerate the growing crime rate that seemed to be a result of the deep social change caused

by economic growth in China. The underlying impetus for the campaign appeared to be to affirm the authority of Beijing at a time when it

was openly ignored by local officials.

Efforts to make the rule of law more just in China have been slowly gaining momentum, and earlier this year the national legislature passed new criminal laws that legal experts praised for bringing more modern, professional standards into China's system of justice.

Yet last year's campaign, called "Strike Hard," demonstrated that there still remains some way to go before legal cases and issues are fully decided by judges instead of by politicians.

By collecting and analyzing data on the executions carried out last year, Amnesty International's report was able to demonstrate the way that local authorities sometimes arbitrarily punish offenders, violating the principle of equality before the law that the current leadership publicly endorses.

"Police, judicial organs, and local leaders were under pressure to achieve speedy results," the report said. "Eager to prove their credentials, several provinces began their campaigns by retrying and sentencing to death offenders previously sentenced to fixed terms of imprisonment."

In one murder case, a man was executed on May 19, 1996, for a crime he was accused of committing on May 13, 1996.

"This translates as six days from alleged crime to final execution of the sentence, including arrest, investigation, first trial, appeal, approval and review," the report said.

In many more cases, local officials exercised broad discretion in deciding what constitutes a capital case.

A man named Lu Qigang was sentenced to death for sticking thorns and needles into the buttocks of female cyclists near the horticultural farm in Beijing where he worked. An official account of his trial alleged that Lu "acted indecently toward women in broad daylight" and that "it seriously harmed the peace and aroused the strong indignation of the masses."

Although many women, who have been sexually harassed may feel Mr. Lu got what was coming, Amnesty International pointed out that the crime of "hooliganism," with which Mr. Lu was charged, is an ill-defined term that is open to wide interpretation by local judicial officials and that execution in this case could hardly be called appropriate.

Chinese legal scholars already have recognized the limitations of this charge, and hooliganism will be replaced by several more specifically defined offenses in revisions to the criminal law expected to take effect in October.

Although the authorities often defended their "Strike Hard" campaign as necessary to combat serious crime such as drug trafficking, most of those punished with death in drug cases were couriers found guilty of simple possession.

The report cites the case of a young woman who carried a package on a train from her honeymoon in Kunming to her native Guangdong. The official report said that she took the package for an acquaintance in exchange for money, but she attracted the attention of a ticket checker when she had difficulty opening it. The ticket checker turned her in. She was sentenced to death.