Criminal Justice
After more than 12 years in prison, Liu Jingsheng, one of the founders of the Free Labor Union of China (FLUC), was freed November 29. His original sentence for "organizing and leading a counter-revolutionary organization," was to end in May 2007.
Now 50, Liu joined the 1978 Democracy Wall movement and, along with Wei Jingsheng, established the underground magazine, "Exploration." He was also one of the founders of the China Freedom and Democracy Party.
Human Rights in China (HRIC) reports that security officials continue to torture Mao Hengfeng, an opponent of China's coercive family planning policies. Sentenced in April 2004 to one-and-a-half years of reeducation through labor (RETL) for petitioning the government after she was fired for resisting pressure to have an abortion, Ms. Mao was tortured by RETL authorities at a Shanghai camp, see an October 2004 HRIC report. HRIC now has learned that camp authorities have since stepped up their mistreatment of Ms. Mao, evidently to coerce her into acknowledging wrongdoing.
On November 1, the People’s Daily reported on a Sino-U.S. defense lawyer training conference held in Guangzhou. The conference, jointly sponsored by New York University Law School and China Lawyer Magazine, was reportedly attended by more than 100 Chinese lawyers and included a mock U.S. criminal trial staged by American judges, prosecutors, law professors, and criminal defense experts. The conference was the third in a series of criminal defense training conferences also held in Shanghai and Xi’an. Organizers reported a positive response from the Chinese audience in all three cities.
The Chinese government claims to have cleared “extended detention” cases involving more than 31,438 people between January 2003 and September of this year. Chinese officials define “extended detention” as the detention of criminal suspects and defendants beyond domestic statutory time limits for handling criminal cases.
According to a November 4 report posted on the Ministry of Justice Web site, public security agencies, people’s procuratorates, and people’s courts cleared extended detention cases involving 12,863, 571, and 18,004 individuals, respectively. The report notes that while cases involving 1,045 individuals remain to be rectified, 18 provinces and municipalities have cleared all extended detention cases.
The Dui Hua Foundation has released information about the recent release of Chen Gang, a worker from Xiangtang, Hunan, and the propsective release next year of Wu Shishen, a former Xinhua domestic news editor. Both prisoners have long been the focus of advocacy efforts by human rights groups and foreign governments, including the U.S. government.
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has issued a revised Chinese-language version of its "Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment." The new version is now available at the following link:
Torture Investigation Manual in Chinese.
Individuals and organizations in China may be able to use the manual to improve Chinese government adherence to international human rights norms forbidding torture.
A November 18 article in the China Youth Daily, citing criminal law expert Chen Renhua, reports that the Supreme People’s Court has already decided to take back the power of death penalty review in all cases and is now discussing how establish special review panels to examine the cases. Although the PRC Criminal Procedure Law and Criminal Law state that the SPC shall review all death sentences, in the 1980s, the SPC delegated this power to provincial high people’s courts for cases involving murder, rape, and several other crimes.
According to a Legal Daily report, Liaoning province has issued a new regulation on meetings between lawyers and criminal suspects. With exceptions for cases involving state secrets or organized crime, the regulation requires law enforcement agencies to respond in writing and arrange a meeting between a lawyer and a suspect within 48 hours of receiving a request for such a meeting. When a case involves organized crime, the agencies have five days to respond and make arrangements. In the case of a crime involving state secrets, the law enforcement agency must approve or reject the request within a five-day period (but need not necessarily arrange a meeting). The text of the provincial regulation is available here.
In its most recent article on the power of death penalty review in China, Southern Weekend (11/4) discusses the efforts of the Gansu High People's Court to overturn a series of death penalty cases. All three of the cases involved narcotics trafficking. In each case, Gansu HPC judges questioned the legality of evidence presented in lower level court proceedings, noting that witnesses who provided key evidence had disappeared or were on the run.
The HPC judges interviewed noted that even though the cases appeared to have obvious flaws, the decision to order retrials was the subject of hot debate within the court and required significant courage and willpower. One judge indicated that the Supreme People's Court has specifically approved its judgments. The report, which cast the court's work in a positive light, noted that the judges had studied overseas and were applying the theory they had studied.
Citing Voice of America, the Epoch Times Web site reports that a Guangdong Intermediate People's Court has rejected the second appeal of Yu Huafeng, former general manager of the Southern Metropolitan Daily. There had been some hope that Yu and Li Minying might be released or have their sentences reduced following the release of Cheng Yizhong, who was detained at the same time as Yu and Li.