Asia-Pacific, Crime & Justice, Headlines, Human Rights

DEATH PENALTY: Public Seeks Blood for Corrupt Chinese Officials

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Jun 5 2006 (IPS) - When Liu Zhixiang was given a suspended death sentence in April for a long list of crimes that included hiring an assassin, bribery and embezzling some 40 million yuan (5 million U.S. dollar), it sparked indignant letters of protest from ordinary people and legal scholars alike.

Not because the sentence against Liu, a high-ranking railway official from Wuhan city, was too strong but too lenient. The readers, it seems, wanted Liu’s head.

“We shouldn’t let off some corrupt officials and punish others,” argued legal scholar Yan Lieshan in the China Economic Times. “Corrupt officials’ lives should be spared only if the capital punishment is negated for all economic crimes. The current practice of punishing some with death while sparing others harms the public’s trust in justice.”

The result is that the government has been put in a bind. Under worldwide criticism to curb its appetite to execute its citizens – China accounts for more than 80 percent of the death sentences carried out worldwide – the country is trying to reform.

The death penalty opposition lobby has urged China to abolish capital punishment for non- violent white-collar economic crimes, like bribery, fraud and embezzlement. But the public sees the campaign, called “kill fewer, kill carefully,” as unevenly applied and benefiting mostly corrupt officials.

“The truth is that people here are so infuriated with big-time corruption that even executing Liu wouldn’t have assuaged public anger,” says a Western diplomat based in Beijing, who did not want to be identified.

Still, China’s wanton use of the death penalty for economic crimes has made it difficult for the country to repatriate suspects who have fled the country. In order to convince many Western countries to hand over suspects, it must agree not to use capital punishment, something Beijing is slow to do. As a consequence, the number of economic criminals who have found “safe heavens” abroad has risen sharply.

According to figures from the Ministry of Public Security, more than 800 suspects accused of embezzling a total of 70 billion yuan (8.75 billion U.S. dollar) worth of property and funds have fled the country. Only 320 have been repatriated.

Repeated smuggling schemes and fraud scandals within its own officialdom tarnish the Chinese government, making it difficult to convince its own citizens it can severely but evenly crack down on corruption.

In recent years Beijing well-publicised the hangings of a handful of high-ranking party cadres and government officials to show its determination in fighting corruption.

Such was the case of Hu Changqing, vice-governor of the east coastal Jiangxi province, who the court, in 2000, sentenced to death for accepting bribes and executed in a matter of weeks. Hu was said to be the most senior government official executed since the founding of communist China in 1949. The People’s Daily, the communist party’s newspaper, labelled him the “people’s enemy.”

The country’s most wanted fugitive, Lai Changxing, accused of being the mastermind behind the country’s largest ever smuggling ring, fled to Canada in 1999 and remains there under house arrest.

Beijing wants him extradited home to face charges of smuggling, bribery and tax evasion, all of which could carry a death sentence. Canadian officials have been unwilling to send Lai back precisely because he could face a firing squad. Now, China may well agree not to execute him.

Last month China ratified a new repatriation agreement with Spain. As part of the treaty, the first with a Western government, Beijing agreed not to execute repatriated criminals.

China’s formal commitment not to execute repatriated criminals from Spain has drawn approvals from the death penalty opponents here who hope the treaty will serve as a basis for future similar agreements with other countries. Yet some legal experts and legislators fear the treaty undermines China’s anti-graft fight by encouraging more corrupt officials to flee abroad and making the public even more distrustful.

“Ratifying the treaty with a clause that formalises the exemption of death penalty could stir a lot of anger here,” says legal expert Ying Songnian who attended the Parliament’s deliberations of the treaty. “It would appear that crooked officials who have the connections and money to buy their way out get spared, while others who don’t get punished,” Ying told the media on the sidelines of the parliamentary session.

But Beijing lawyer Chen Chuangdong approved of the move. “The limits imposed on the death penalty use through treaties like this mean there would be more sentences of life imprisonment,” he told IPS. “This is more humane and still ensures that justice is achieved.”

In China, theft or embezzlement of 500,000 yuan (62,500 U.S. dollar) officially is the threshold for a death sentence. Lawyers say the sentence these days is rarely applied to cases that involve less than three or four million yuan.

With 40 million yuan of embezzled funds, Liu, the railway employee, should have received a mandatory death sentence. Instead, he was given a suspended death sentence in a trial seen by some as casting a shadow over judicial fairness.

Chinese newspapers often carry opinion pieces written by readers or experts in lieu of letters to the editors. As an indication of the raw nerve Liu’s sentence struck, the opinion pieces filled a full page. Nearly all the contributions opposed his sentence.

Liu’s lawyers had argued that his crimes resulted from flaws in the social system, which has been undergoing rapid changes in the course of China’s headlong market reforms. That defence did not play well with the public.

“It is absurd to blame graft of government officials on defects of our social system,” said a signed opinion piece in the China Economic Times. “Why don’t we blame the system for failing to provide employment and social benefits when laid-off workers and poor peasants are sentenced to death for stealing or murdering?”

Liu’s punishment was viewed too soft by many readers because the government routinely commutes suspended deaths sentences to life imprisonment. Life imprisonment allows for early parole. A survey by the Ministry of Justice last year found out that the majority of criminals who were sentenced to life imprisonment actually stayed in prison 15 or 16 years before being released.

Moreover, official statistics show that in 2004 only two of the 11 people sentenced to death for economic crimes were executed.