Criminal Justice
Activist Jailed in China Seeks Medical Aid By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: December 14, 2004 Filed at 5:47 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Boston-based democracy activist jailed in China is seeking a medical parole because of a stroke he suffered earlier this year, his wife says. Yang Jianli, who has served more than half of a five-year prison term on charges of espionage and illegal entry, was hospitalized for the stroke earlier in the summer and continues to feel numbness on the left side of his body, his wife, Christina Fu, said Tuesday. Advertisement Fu learned details of her husband's condition after his brother and sister-in-law were allowed to visit him at the Beijing prison Tuesday. ``It's a big relief that his condition is not life-threatening right now,'' said Fu, who still lives in the Boston area with their two children. ``But I would really rather see him coming home.'' In a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell sent Tuesday, Fu's lawyer, Jared Genser, asked the U.S.
According to a recent report in the Legal Daily, the Zhengzhou Intermediate People's Court is now requiring judges to provide specific reasoning to justify the criminal sentences they hand down. The article notes that before the new requirement was introduced, courts were required to provide reasoning to back up determinations of guilt or innocence, but typically used only boilerplate language in the section of the judgment that specified the sentence. This practice led to confusion on the part of defendants, endless appeals and petitions, and suspicion in some instances that personal relationships were influencing the sentencing process. The article concludes that the new system conforms to the principle of "public judgment" and will promote justice and "judicial civilization."
According to a November 29 report in the Beijing News, scholars commissioned by the Supreme People's Court to draft a proposal for the amendment of the PRC Organic Law of the People’s Courts have forwarded a final proposal to the SPC for review. Beijing University professor He Weifang and China University of Politics and Law professor Fan Chongyi, who lead the team, held interviews to discuss the draft amendments last week. The proposal reportedly calls for the elimination of article 13 of the current Organic Law, which authorizes the SPC to delegate its power to review death sentences to provincial high people’s courts.
The Ziyuan County Government in the Guangxi Zhuang Minority Autonomous Region has sued three reporters for defamation. The government agency filed suit against Li Wan, Tang Zicheng, and Wei Xing, three reporters with the Rural Edition of the Economic Daily in connection with a report entitled "Shenyang to Become a Beggars' Village." According to Xinhua, the agency claims that the report "misled some of the villagers in Shenyang village, brought out contradictions between the government and the masses, led to hundreds of villagers repeatedly petitioning, and influenced the normal working order of the county government." The article in question examined the county government's requisitioning of land from farmers for development. The government claimed that the report contained five "factual errors":
According to reports in Chinese domestic media (1, 2, 3), Justice Minister Zhang Fusen led a national work conference on management of the re-education through labor (RETL) system. He announced what were characterized as four "major" reforms to the system: (1) standardization of the three types of RETL management (closed, open, and semi-open), with an emphasis on semi-open management; (2) improvement of education methods, with a new emphasis on classroom education and "scientific" methods; (3) strengthening of efforts to provide vocational training to detainees; and (4) the adoption of a "healthy life code" for detainees, with a new focus on disease prevention and controlling drug habits.
After a series of critical media reports, Guangdong law enforcement and judicial agencies are defending their performance before the provincial legislature and in the news media. In mid-November, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate reported on the results of a national campaign to eliminate illegal extended detentions. The report, which was covered widely in domestic media, singled out Guangdong for the largest number of unresolved extended detention cases. On November 24, Southern Metropolitan Daily reported that in an October survey, only 45% of respondents said they felt "safe" or "relatively safe." More than two thirds said they did not feel secure on the street or at public transportation stations.
Ouyang Yi Released
Reporters Without Borders reported that Chinese authorities have released Ouyang Yi following the completion of his two year sentence. Former teacher Ouyang Yi was detained by the Chengdu Public Security Bureau in December 2002 after he co-authored an open letter with Zhao Changqing to the 16th Party Congress. HRIC reported that the letter requested reassessment of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests, restoring Zhao Ziyang’s political rights and releasing him from house arrest, and releasing all prisoners of conscience. The letter was signed by almost 200 people, including Dai Xuezhong, Han Lifa, He Depu, Sang Jiancheng, and Jiang Lijun, who were also subsequently detained. Ouyang Yi was formally arrested in January 2003, tried, in October 2003, and sentenced in March 2004 to two years in prison by the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court for inciting subversion.
According to an article carried in the Beijing News, the Chinese government is currently considering significant amendments to the PRC Organic Law of People's Courts. Draft amendments under consideration would return the power of death penalty review to the Supreme People's Court (SPC) and introduce explicit protections regarding judicial independence.
According to an official press release, Austrian lawyer Manfred Nowak will be the new UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, effective December 1. Mr. Nowak will replace Theo van Boven, who had long negotiated with the Chinese government for permission to make an investigative visit to China. In March 2004, the Chinese government agreed to a visit by van Boven, but later postponed the visit with a pledge to reschedule it before the end of 2004.
According to a November report originally published in the Procuratorial Daily, a Sichuan court has sentenced one public security officer to twelve years imprisonment and another to one year of imprisonment for crimes related to the torture death of a peasant woman in 2001. The woman was brought to a rural police station on suspicion of prostitution and beaten to death after she denied involvement in illegal activity. According to the report, the woman’s husband petitioned for several years before the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and Sichuan Procuratorate finally ordered an investigation. The story includes graphic testimony from witnesses to the crime.