Criminal Justice
According to a press release issued by Freedom Now, January 19th marks the 1000th day that democracy activist Yang Jianli has been imprisoned in China. Yang’s wife, Christina Fu, recently returned from her first and only visit with her husband since he was detained in April 2002. According to Ms. Fu, Yang remains in high spirits but suffered a minor stroke in July 2004 and has lost some function in his left arm and hand. She expressed concern about her husband’s deteriorating health and hope that the Chinese government would release him on medical parole as soon as possible.
At a meeting of high court judges in mid-December, Supreme People’s Court President Xiao Yang reportedly instructed courts to strengthen rights protection and ensure that innocent people are not prosecuted in the course of efforts to fight crime and maintain social stability (China Court Net, 12/16). Echoing Xiao’s statement, the China Daily published an editorial on December 18 calling for stronger measures to protect human rights as law enforcers and courts launch a long-term crackdown to counter China's crime wave.
According to a Guangming Daily report, the Supreme People’s Court has announced that with the exception of a few cases involving legal technicalities, all extended detention cases involving the courts were cleared as of the end of last year. The report indicates that courts cleared a total of 873 extended detention cases involving 2,432 individuals in 2004. In mid-December, SPC Vice-President Cao Jianming noted that as of November 30, courts had cleared 828 cases of extended detention involving 2,427 individuals in 2004, and that only 8 cases involving 8 individuals remained to be rectified. The Guangming Daily did not offer any explanation for the apparent discrepancy between the two sets of statistics.
In a revealing article originally published in October 2004, the Beijing Review examines three major issues in China’s evolving legal profession: the problem of corruption, the threat of official retribution faced by defense lawyers, and the prospect of amendments to the PRC Lawyers Law that may enhance the independence of lawyers associations.
According to a 21st Century Business Herald report originally published in August 2004, the Beijing justice bureau effectively canceled a multi-year study on the work environment for Chinese criminal defense attorneys in 2002 after initial research revealed major problems. Scholars and lawyers in Beijing launched the research in an attempt to determine the extent of the hardships that Chinese defense attorneys face in representing their clients. In the first phase of the study, researchers sent comprehensive surveys on criminal defense work to 2,000 lawyers in and around Beijing (considered to have a better than average work environment for defense attorneys by Chinese standards) and received nearly 600 responses. According to the article, the initial results “shocked people,” with one observer noting that the problems were worse than they thought possible.
According to a January 13 report on the China Court Net, the Xinhui District People’s Court in Jiangmen city has convicted a Guangdong defense lawyer for evidence fabrication and sentenced the lawyer to two years in prison. The defense lawyer allegedly presented fabricated documents at a corruption trial and encouraged his client and a witness to give false testimony. An intermediate level people’s court upheld the sentence.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue recently noted that the Chinese government has formed a special "working group" to research and promote ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. China signed the treaty in 1998 but has yet to ratify it. Zhang made her comments on the treaty working group in the context of discussing progress made during the 18th China-European Union human rights dialogue and stressed that the Chinese government has already approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Social, Cultural, and Economic Rights.
In a December 6 commentary published in the 21st Century Business Herald, a Chinese legal scholar criticizes the common practice of "repeat prosecutions" and "repeated re-trials" of the same individual in China. He calls for "suitable restrictions" on the state’s prosecution power and on the number of times that a retrial may be held.
According to articles in the South China Morning Post (subscription required), Beijing News, and the People’s Daily, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) has rebuked two Beijing academics who authored broad-ranging judicial reform proposals. The proposals involved significant changes to both the SPC death penalty review and the internal organization of the courts.
According to a report by Freedom Now, democracy activist Yang Jianli has suffered a minor stroke and is having other health problems. Yang, 41, a U.S. permanent resident who is serving a five-year sentence in Beijing, revealed the health conditions during a one-hour visit with family members last week. He reportedly plans to petition for medical parole.