Last April, China's Southern Metropolis Daily printed a story about Sun Zhigang, a migrant worker in Guangzhou beaten to death in official custody after being detained by police for not carrying ID. The story touched off a wave of public outrage that reached Beijing: in June, Premier Wen Jiabao led a Cabinet vote that proscribed the detention of migrants simply for straying far from their hometowns. The next morning, the paper editorialized: "This is a milestone in the history of citizens' rights that we should cherish forever."
The rights of citizens might have been buttressed by the Daily's scoop - but at a price. Officials in Guangdong province had previously censured the paper for its aggressive coverage of last year's SARS outbreak. At 3 a.m. on March 19 - one year to the day after Sun was killed - authorities raided the Guangzhou home of Daily editor Cheng Yizhong, confiscating books, magazines and computer documents and taking him into custody. Last week, two senior staff members of the paper were sentenced to hefty jail terms on charges of corruption. (The prosecution said the two had embezzled company money. Their defense attorney asserts that the payments were standard performance-based bonuses.)
Neil Gough/TimeAsia 29.Mar.06
China, which keeps the number of people it executes under wraps, is believed to have carried out about 8,000 executions in 2005, said Liu Renwen, a scholar at the Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Amnesty International (AI) documented at least 3,400 executions in 2004 - 90% of the total of capital punishments recorded around the world - but workers in the human-rights lobby said they believe the actual number to be higher.
[...]
Political pressure intensifies particularly during the periodic Yan Da (Strike Hard) campaigns against crime. Initiated in 1983 by China's late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to counter the downsides of the country's opening to the outside world, Yan Da campaigns were revived in 1996 by then-president Jiang Zemin.
During these crackdowns, legal institutions are required to speed up normal legal procedures to meet quotas for solved crimes. Death sentences are carried out swiftly by a bullet to the back of the head.
Since the first Strike Hard campaign in 1983, the number of crimes punishable by death has doubled from 32 to 68, including economic offences such as smuggling, tax evasion and embezzlement.
Antoaneta Bezlova/IPS 31.Mar.06
Eight countries since 1990 are known to have executed prisoners who were under 18 years old at the time of the crime - China, Congo (Democratic Republic), Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, USA and Yemen.
China, Pakistan and Yemen have raised the minimum age to 18 in law, and Iran is reportedly in the process of doing so.
The USA executed more child offenders than any other country (19 between 1990 and 2003).
Amnesty International recorded four executions of child offenders in 2004 - one in China and three in Iran.
Eight child offenders were executed in Iran in 2005.
Amnesty International
