China’s crime rate falls after executions

Press, 24 April 1984, Page 5

China’s crime rate falls after executions

NZPA-AFP Peking China's crime rate almost halved in the last four months of 1983 because of the huge increase in execution of offenders since August, according to a leading Chinese judiciary official In an interview published in the weekly "Peking Review," Zhu Mingshan. vicechairman of the People’s Supreme Court, said that the monthly crime rate in the last third of 1983 dropped 43.3 per cent compared with the same period in 1982. Mr Zhu also said that the crime rate at the end of last year was 44.7 per cent down compared with the first eight months. Last August. China launched a national law-and-order crackdown in which thousands of people have been executed and tens of thousands arrested and banished to remote and desolate frontier regions. The campaign was approved in September by the

National People's Congress — the Chinese Parliament — which decided to extend considerably the range of crimes punishable by death, while cutting down on the length of judicial proceedings. Mr Zhu said that these measures were necessitated by the sharp rise in crime in China in recent years and he insisted that the legal rights of the accused were protected. “So far as we know, not a single prisoner has been wrongly executed" during the anti-crime campaign, he said. He conceded that "errors" in verdicts were inevitable but said they were corrected "as soon as they are discovered.”

The crackdown prompted concern in the West, particularly among bodies such as the human rights organisation. Amnesty International. which attempted to intervene and stop the Executions. China rejected the appeal as an interference in its domestic affairs. Mr Zhu said that criminals had the right to a defence and appeal. However, observers said that both rights, and particularly the second, remained theoretical. It is exceptional for a sentence to be reduced on appeal, although not for it to be increased. However, such a measure in principle runs against Chinese judicial procedure. Mr Zhu said.