In February 2011, China dropped the death penalty for 13 non-violent crimes

In February 2011, China dropped the death penalty for 13 non-violent crimes and banned capital punishment for offenders over the age of 75. The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) passed an amendment to the Criminal Law, reducing the number of crimes punishable by death from 68 to 55. The new rules came into effect on 1 May 2011. It was the first time the People’s Republic of China has reduced the number of crimes subject to the death penalty since the Criminal Law took effect in 1979. The 13 crimes were economic-related non-violent offences, including: smuggling cultural relics, gold, silver, and other precious metals, rare animals and their products, and ordinary goods and materials out of the Country; carrying out fraudulent activities with receipts, financial documents, and credit notes; false issuance of exclusive value-added tax invoices to defraud export tax refunds or to offset taxes; forging or selling of forged exclusive value-added tax invoices; theft; teaching of crime-committing methods; theft of ancient cultural relics; theft of fossils. The amendment also stipulates that the death penalty will not be imposed on people aged 75 or older at the time of trial, except if they commit a murder with exceptional cruelty. Previously, only convicts younger than 18 when the crime was committed, and pregnant women at the time of the trial, were exempted from capital punishment. The amendment, the eighth to the 1997 version of the Criminal Law, is considered another move by China to limit the use of death penalty, and is meant to further implement the principle of tempering justice with mercy.
Offences punishable by death still include non-violent crimes such as corruption, embezzlement, gambling, sale of counterfeit money, drug possession, disturbing the peace, cigarette and car smuggling, organizing or publication of pornographic clubs or material, exploitation of prostitutes, information piracy, and speculation.
According to China’s Criminal Law, a drug dealer can be sentenced to death for producing, transporting or trafficking more than 50 grams of heroin or one kilogram of opium. Traffickers caught with 150 kilograms of marijuana can also face the death penalty. The most lenient sentence for such a crime is 15 years. As has long been the case in China, death sentences and executions increased markedly around National holidays and dates of symbolic international importance such as the International Day Against Drugs on 26 June.
Although the death penalty remains a State secret in China, some news in recent years, including declarations from official sources, suggest that the use of the death penalty may have diminished compared to preceding years.
A major turnabout came after the introduction of a legal reform on 1 January 2007, which required that every capital sentence handed down in China by an inferior court be reviewed by the Supreme People’s Court (SPC). Since then, the top court has overturned “on average” 10 percent of death sentences handed down each year in the Country.
According to William A. Schabas, Professor of international law at Middlesex University in London, in 2012 “China has probably executed about 3,000 people.” “This represents a decline of more than 50% from the number only five years ago,” he wrote on his blog on 18 December 2012, after more than a decade of his participation in various conferences on capital punishment in China and many encounters with experts in the Chinese criminal justice system. “The vast majority of these executions are for homicide in one form or another,” Schabas noted.
According to the US-based Dui Hua Foundation’s estimate, “the number of executions has been sharply reduced, although in 2012 it remained high at around 3,000 per year.” According to the Foundation, the reduction was likely brought about by greater use of sentence of death with two-year reprieve (which is nearly always commuted to life imprisonment or a fixed-term sentence), improvements in due process rights recently codified in revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law (CPL), continued review by the Supreme People’s Court, and the decision to move away from using executed prisoners as the country’s primary “organ donors.”
The Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco-based group that works on behalf of political prisoners and monitors Chinese prisons, estimated that China had carried out “about” 4,000 executions in 2011, while there were "about" 5,000 in 2010, as in 2009 and still a slight decrease as compared to 2008, when the number of executions “exceeded 5,000 and may have been as high as 7,000.” According to the Foundation, run by business executive-turned-human-rights advocate John Kamm – who still maintains good relations with government officials – about 6,000 people were executed in 2007, a 25 to 30 percent drop from 2006, in which estimates reported at least 7,500 executions.
According to the estimates of a Chinese legal expert, Liu Renwen, law professor and director of Criminal Law Department of the Institute of Law under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, since the SPC regained the power to conduct final review over death sentences, the number of executions had declined by more than 50 percent. State media quoted Liu as saying in 2006 that an estimate of about 8,000 executions annually was “realistic.”
On 10 March 2013, in his report to the annual session of the National People’s Congress, the President of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), Wang Shengjun, in keeping with the government’s customary secrecy, gave no figures for the number of death sentences or executions. At the end of five years of his mandate, Wang has exposed a comprehensive overview of work done by the Chinese courts and the Supreme Court, but he did not specify the number of cases dealt and concluded in 2012.
Chinese courts convicted and punished 5.24 million people from 2008 to 2012, up 25.5 percent over the period from 2003 to 2007, said the country's top judge. Among them, 1.86 million were convicted of felony charges, including homicide, kidnapping, robbery, planting bombs, organized crime and human trafficking. But again Wang did not say how many were sentenced to death sentences.
However, the courts have been cautious about delivering the death penalty and the Supreme Court strictly reviewed these sentences, President Wang said. "We have ensured the capital punishment to be imposed on a very small number of people convicted of extremely serious crimes," he said.
Over the period from 2008 to 2012, the Supreme People's Court closed a total of 49,863 cases of various types, President Wang reported, without specifying the number of cases concluded in 2012. However, this information can be easily obtained by subtracting the known data of the previous four years from the five-year total. The result is 9,248 cases closed in 2012, 1,267 less than in 2011.
Given that the great majority – at least 90 percent – of these cases are death penalty review cases, as the SPC doesn’t have jurisdiction over many other cases, an approximate but realistic estimate would put the number of death sentences in 2012 – between definitive sentences and those suspended for two years – at around 8,300, a sharp decrease from about 9,400 estimated in 2011.
Considering further that, since February 2010, the Supreme People’s Court has recommended to use a policy of “justice tempered with mercy,” suggesting to the courts to “suspend the death sentence for two years for all cases that don’t require immediate execution,” it is realistic to conclude that the executions in 2012, as estimated by Professor William Schabas and the Dui Hua Foundation, were about 3,000, a significant decrease compared to the 4,000 of 2011.
At the same session of the National People’s Congress, chief justice Wang Shengjun said the Supreme Court also worked to improve transparency of court proceedings. Annual work reports of courts were published and judgment papers were put on line while parties could follow the proceeding of their cases through court websites. Despite the progress in the past five years, the court system still faced a number of difficulties and problems, Wang said. Efforts are needed to guarantee the independence of judges and courts and to improve the transparency of court work, he said. The top judge also blamed a number of judges for improper style of work or even corruption and dereliction of duty, which "has seriously tarnished the image of the people's courts and the public trust on judiciary system."
The reform, which took effect on 1 January 2007, is considered one of the most significant reforms concerning the death penalty in the last twenty years. It signals a turn-around from the “hit hard” approach taken on in the Eighties that brought the Supreme Court to delegate final decisions regarding capital punishment cases to the lower provincial courts.
According to the new provision, the review of each case should be carried out by three judges of the Supreme Court, who must re-examine all evidence, the laws applied, the appropriateness of the sentence, the arguments of the preceding trial and they must hear the accused in person or by letter before reaching a final decision. If the judges find the evidence insufficient, the sentencing inappropriate or the trial arguments illegal, they present the case to the Judicial Committee of the Supreme Court. The committee examines the case along with a prosecutor from the Office of the Attorney General Supreme of the People.
After the reform of 2007, China has continued to take new measures to limit the number of death sentences and prevent wrongful convictions in capital cases.
In May 2008, China’s Supreme Court and Ministry of Justice jointly issued regulations on the protection of defence lawyers’ roles in capital cases to ensure that defendants’ legal rights were upheld. The regulations build upon existing documents on defence lawyers’ work in capital cases. They also standardize the lawyers’ duties, the official said. Some provisions of the regulations include: legal aid institutions must designate lawyers with criminal defence experience in capital cases; lawyers shall not transfer such cases to assistants and must meet the defendant before trial; judges must “earnestly listen” to lawyers’ suggestions, ensure that lawyers are able to complete their presentations, and explain why defence lawyers’ motions are honoured or denied; the Court must inform “interested parties,” lawyers and prosecutors of any date change for court hearings three days ahead of time; the Court must notify lawyers if prosecutors submit new evidence or re-evaluate the case before a re-trial.
In February 2010, China’s highest court issued new guidelines on the death penalty that instruct lower courts to limit its use to a small number of “extremely serious” cases.
In August 2010, China made a new move to ensure the appeals process for the condemned, considering that some provincial higher courts and prosecutors have been dealing with situations in which the condemned decide to revoke appeals during a second trial. According to a judicial interpretation published by the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) and Supreme People’s Procuratorate, once an appeal has been accepted by a higher court, those sentenced to death are not allowed to stop it.
In its 2011 report, the Supreme People’s Court said the criminal convicts who the courts feel do not merit immediate execution are suggested to be given a sentence of death with two years’ reprieve. In normal law practice, these types of offenders are ultimately commuted to lifetime imprisonment after two years. “Suspend the death sentence for two years for all cases that don’t require immediate execution,” read the report. “Strictly control and unify standards relating to the death penalty, and ensure that it only applies to a very small minority of criminals committing extremely serious crimes,” read one section of the Supreme Court’s report. The court report also vowed the prudent adoption of the death penalty for cases involving serious violence triggered by civil disputes, especially when defendants were forgiven by their victims.
On 14 March 2012, China amended again the 1979 Criminal Procedure Law, highlighting the human rights protection. The National People’s Congress (NPC) adopted the amendment with overwhelming votes at the closing meeting of the annual parliamentary session. The phrase of “respecting and protecting human rights” is written in the revised law’s first chapter on aim and basic principles. The amendment further specifies the procedures for the Supreme People’s Court to review death penalty cases in order that such cases will be handled “with sufficient care”, and “legal oversight” will be strengthened. According to the amendment, judges have to reach an explicit ruling on whether or not to approve the death sentence. For sentences being refuted by the court, judges should either commute the sentence or send the case back to the court of first instance for retrial. The new clause requires judges from the Supreme People’s Court to interrogate offenders sentenced to death and listen to defendants’ lawyers when a capital punishment case is under review. The amendment, for the first time, has also made clear that confessions extorted through illegal means, such as torture, and witness testimony and depositions of victims obtained illegally, such as by violence or threats, should be excluded during the trials. To institutionally prevent extortion of confession by torture, the amendment has regulated that suspects be sent to a detention facility for custody after being detained or arrested and be interrogated there. The process of interrogation shall be audio or video-taped.
On 11 June 2012, a government action plan was released to improve the trial procedures and reviews of death penalty cases. The National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2012-2015), published by China’s State Council Information Office (SCIO), said that the trial of all death penalty cases of second instance will be open to the public. The review of death penalty should include the questioning of the defendant, and listening to the opinions of his or her attorney if the attorney so demands, the action plan said. Legal supervision by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate over the review of death penalty will be strengthened, the plan said, adding that the Supreme People’s Court will publicize typical cases to clarify the norms of application of death penalty. The action plan said China will continue to push forward standardized measurement of penalty, and the People’s Procuratorates will make suggestions on penalty measurement to the people’s courts when handling criminal cases. The discretion in penalty measurement will be institutionalized. Guidelines on penalty measurement by the people’s courts will be worked out, so will regulations of the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security on standardizing procedures of penalty measurement to guarantee openness and fairness in penalty measurement, it said. China will further improve the system to have witnesses and expert witnesses appear in court and the system of protecting the witnesses, and improve the system of eliminating illegal evidence, the plan said. All confessions by suspects and defendants extorted by torture or other illegal methods, as well as testimonies and statements of witnesses or victims collected by violence, threat or other illegal means will be eliminated and not used in working out the verdict, it said. In addition, the stipulations on evidences used to examine and decide cases of death penalty will be strictly observed, and more strict standards will be adopted in this regard, it said. The action plan also pledged to implement the Decisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Audio-Visual Recordings of Court Trials, and the system of producing audio-visual recordings of the whole process of suspect interrogating in major cases will be established.
According to the Criminal Procedure Law of the PRC, after receiving an order from the Supreme People’s Court to execute a death sentence, the People’s Court at a lower level shall cause the sentence to be executed within seven days. A death sentence may be executed on the execution ground or in a designated place of custody. The judicial officer directing the execution shall verify the identity of the criminal, ask them if they have any last words or letters and then deliver them to the executioner for the execution itself. Executions shall be announced but shall not be held in public. After a death sentence is executed, the court clerk on the scene must prepare a written record of it. The People’s Court that caused the death sentence to be executed shall submit a report on the execution to the Supreme People’s Court. After a death sentence is executed, the People’s Court that caused the death sentence to be executed shall notify the family members of the executed.
In China, death sentences are carried out by such means as shooting or lethal injection.
An amendment to China’s Criminal Procedure Law in 1996 allowed for executions by lethal injection, using the same three-drug cocktail pioneered by the United States.
“Lethal injection is considered more humane, because it reduces the fear and suffering,” Chinese authorities said. “It is more acceptable for convicts and their family members.” Hu Yunteng, head of the Supreme People’s Court’s Research Bureau, said that lethal injection was considered cleaner, safer and more convenient than gunshot executions.
Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, was the Country’s first city to adopt lethal injection on 28 March 1997, followed by the cities of Changsha, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Chongqing, Hangzhou and Shenyang. In 2003, Yunnan province was the first to move exclusively to lethal injection.
In June 2006, Zhejiang province in eastern China announced it would carry out all executions by lethal injection from 1 September of that year.
In March 2008, after a 10 year trial-period, the city of Chengdu, capital of south-western China’s Sichuan Province, formally adopted lethal injection instead of shooting.
In December 2009, all 14 cities in the northeast China’s Liaoning Province adopted the method of lethal injection for all executions, meaning execution by gunshot would no longer be used.
On 26 January 2010, the Beijing Youth Daily reported executioners from Beijing’s Intermediate People’s Court have finished their training and, so, they were ready to begin with lethal injection as the main technique for the death penalty in Beijing. In the past, only Qincheng jail in Beijing which imprisons high level officials guilty of crime used lethal injection. The latest lethal injection in Beijing was performed on 10 July 2007 when China’s ministerial-level official Zheng Xiaoyu, former head of the State Food and Drug Administration who was found guilty of taking bribes to approve untested medicine, was executed.
It is impossible to know how many people have died by this method so far, as execution figures are a State secret in China.
China has also introduced mobile execution units. The units consist of specially-modified vans manned by execution teams and equipped with facilities to put people to death with lethal injections close to the venue of the trials. This removes the need to transfer prisoners to execution grounds, a procedure that requires considerable security measures. Convicts are strapped to gurneys a few minutes after their death sentences become final, the needle is inserted into their arm, a member of the execution team presses a button, and the fatal chemicals are injected into their veins. Executions in death vans are recorded on video and audio that is played live to local law enforcement authorities – a measure intended to ensure they are carried out legally.
Before the creation of the buses, the condemned were executed by being shot in the back of the head, but executioners were often forced to wear rubber boots, because of the large amount of blood involved in shootings, and occasionally prisoners had to be shot several times before finally dying. One reason why executioners wanted a different method was because many of those killed were drug traffickers, and were said to have HIV/Aids. Executioners said they were worried they would become infected by spraying blood.
In March 2009, the British newspaper The Independent reported that the “bus of death” used in China is made by Jinguan Auto, a Chongqing-based maker of ambulances, police lorries, bulletproof shields and armour-plated limos. The mobile death chamber is a refitted 17-seater minibus which is seven meters long. So far the company has sold 10 of the vehicles. Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely. The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China “promotes human rights now,” said Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Auto death van in which a criminal known as Zhang “Nine-Fingered Devil” Shiqiang was executed in 2004. He was among the first to die by lethal injection in one of China’s newly minted mobile death vans. As of February 2009, there were at least 40 such buses going the rounds in China.
It is easy to imagine that the transition from firing squads to injections in death vans facilitates an illegal trade in prisoners’ organs. Injections leave the whole body intact and require participation of doctors. Organs can be extracted in a speedier and more effective way than if the prisoner is shot. China’s refusal to give outsiders access to the bodies of executed prisoners has added to suspicions about what happens afterward: corpses are typically driven to a crematorium and burned before relatives or independent witnesses can view them.
In the past, human rights’ organizations have denounced the link between the high number of executions in China and the growing demand for organ transplants, accusing the Chinese authorities of forcing those condemned to death to sign authorizations to remove their organs for transplant.
The regime also faces allegations that it is not ordinary prisoners being used. Rather, prisoners of conscience, mainly members of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, are being actively killed for their organs. Others targeted include persecuted minorities such as Uighur Muslims and House Christians.
The regime admitted in 2005 that it had been harvesting the organs of prisoners on death row, a practice that started in the mid-1980s, and in July 2006 China passed a law banning the sale of organs without the consent of the donor. However, illegal organ harvesting seems to have not decreased.
In August 2009, State media reported two-thirds of organ donors in China are executed prisoners. Huang Jiefu, Vice-Minister for health, said written consent was required from condemned prisoners, but added that they were “definitely not a proper source for organ transplants.” For this, health officials launched a national donation system. Experts estimated that more than 65% of donors were criminals who had received the death penalty.
A revision to China’s Criminal Law, which the top legislature adopted in February 2011, marked the first time for authorities to single out criminal activity related to transactions involving human organs. Criminals convicted of “forced organ removal, forced organ donation or organ removal from juveniles” could face homicide charges as a result of the revision.
On 6 March 2012, Vice-Health Minister Huang Jiefu confirmed that executed prisoners were still the main source of organs used in transplant operations in China due to the lack of voluntary donations. China has long vowed to reduce its reliance on death-row inmates for organs, but high demand and a chronic shortage of donations meant they remained a key source, the Legal Daily quoted the top health official as saying. Huang reportedly made the remarks on the sidelines of the Country’s annual parliamentary session in Beijing where about 3,000 delegates from across the Country have gathered for 10 days of meetings.
On 21 November 2012, Huang Jiefu said the pilot organ donation scheme, which was launched by the Red Cross Society of China in 2010 and operating in only a tenth of the country's qualified hospitals - would be in full swing in the next one or two years by which time China will be able to phase out its reliance on organs from executed prisoners.
On 6 December 2012, a Beijing lawyer, Han Bing, who goes by the Weibo handle “Hanzhou Lawyer”, revealed that a Chinese hospital turned into the execution ground for a prisoner on death row. The prisoner was reportedly rushed to a hospital that morning, where he was forced to sign an organ donation form. His family was not contacted about the “execution”. He was killed in the hospital where the “quality” of his organs would be ensured. “These conscienceless judges and doctors turned the hospital into an execution ground and a market for organ trade!”, Han wrote in his Twitter-like Weibo account. "It is written in the criminal justice policy of the supreme court that executed prisoners must meet their family before the execution. However, the court didn't do that in this case. We will have some actions in the next step. And then, if we make progress, we will make it public", Han said. Han’s revelation would confirm widespread suspicion that the prisoners, unlike what authorities say, are not willing donor.
Since the attacks of 11 September against the U.S.A., the Chinese Government has used the war on terrorism as a pretext to harden its iron fist against all forms of political or religious dissent in the Country. Suspected separatists or religious extremists have, for years, risked arbitrary imprisonment, isolation, torture and, at the end of the polluted process, jail or execution. In particular, China passes off repression against Tibetans and the Uyghurs as part of the war on terrorism and exercises pressure on its neighbours such as Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Nepal and Pakistan to force them to repatriate exiled members of Xinjiang’s Muslim Turkic-speaking Uyghur population. Many of the repatriated Uyghurs have suffered serious violations of their human rights including torture, unfair trials and, also, execution.
In 2012, arrests and prosecutions for crimes of “endangering State security” (ESS) – a category that includes subversion, splittism, incitement of subversion, and incitement of splittism – retreated from the “historic levels” reached in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 but remained high.
The war against terrorism is particularly heavy in East Turkestan (also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), the autonomous north-western region that borders Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and the Republic of Central Asia and where eight million Uyghurs (46 percent of Xinjiang’s population) live.
On 21 January 2013, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region High People’s Court published its annual work report online, and, with a level of transparency not afforded by other jurisdictions, disclosed the number of endangering state security (ESS) trials in 2012. According to the report, 314 ESS trials of first and second instance were concluded in Xinjiang during the year. Compared with data in previous reports, the 2012 figure is a decline of 24 percent year-on-year and the second-lowest level in five years. The number of ESS trials peaked in 2009, corresponding with the July 2009 riots in Urumqi.
In July 2009, the worst ethnic violence to hit China in decades broke out in Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. At least 1,000 Uyghurs were involved in a protest that escalated into attacks on Han people, China’s majority ethnic group, after police cracked down on peaceful protesters. The protest march that preceded the riots was ostensibly a response to the deaths of two Uyghur migrant workers in southern China on 26 June and the Chinese central government’s handling of the case. The two Uyghur workers were killed in a “brawl” which erupted following an internet rumour, which later turned out to be false, that Uyghur workers had raped two Chinese women at the Shaoguan’s Xuri Toy Factory’s men’s dormitory.
For deadly ethnic violence in July 2009 in Xinjiang, in which at least 197 people were killed and 1,721 injured, China convicted more than 200 people. According to State press reports 26 people have so far received capital punishment and at least nine have already been put to death. Most of the names of those sentenced to death appeared to be Uyghur.
Nur Berkri, Xinjiang chairman, insisted that the violence was the work of terrorists, separatists and religious extremists and not linked to development policies in the impoverished region. “There are a few secessionists who are reluctant to see the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang living a happy life under the leadership of China’s Communist Party,” he said.
Uyghur exiles strongly condemned the riot-related death sentences, calling them the “first of the mass executions promised by the government.” “The Uyghurs can do nothing other than hope that the world will stop China from continuing the bloody repression of the Uyghur people,” a statement by the World Uyghur Congress read. Rebiya Kadeer, its president, said that the death sentences would serve only to “further enrage” her people.
Also religious freedom is sharply curtailed. Religious and ethnic minorities remained a key target of repression in 2012, with several deaths in custody reported.
The Chinese authorities recognize, in concept, freedom of religion as a fundamental human right in the Country’s Constitution and as established by principle international treaties. In 2005, a new law went into effect which the Chinese Government hailed as the first substantial systemic provision for religion at a national level which “represents an advance in the protection of freedom of religion for Chinese citizens.”
Regardless, repression continues of religious or spiritual movements not authorized by the State: Protestants and Catholics, Uyghur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists. The Government has also continued its persecution of so-called “cult” movements, in particular, the Falun Gong.
The level of liberty of worship depends on the region. For instance, in Xinjiang, there is a rigid control exercised over Muslims, whereas, in the rest of the Country they enjoy relative freedom. The same is for Buddhists of Inner Mongolia and Tibet as compared to other regions. In Henan, Protestants undergo heavy prosecution, while in Hebei it is the Catholics linked to the Vatican.
According to norms governing religious activity, places of worship must be authorized by the State and it is not uncommon for the police to raid private homes where the faithful have gathered to disrupt the meeting with the excuse that the neighbours were disturbed or that the gathering was otherwise socially disruptive, sometimes arresting participants and forbidding them to meet in the same place again. Saying Mass was once met with harsh punishment such as detention or actual arrest followed by re-education or prison.
In the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, an increased security presence that followed ethnic clashes in 2009 remained in place for much of 2012, and many of the hundreds of people detained in 2009 remained imprisoned or unaccounted for.
Authorities intensified curbs on Islam in the region, raiding private study sessions and destroying thousands of publications, including copies of the Koran. In May, a court in Kashgar sentenced nine people to between six and 15 years in prison for participating in “illegal” religious activities.
Policies marginalizing use of the Uighur language in education, government efforts to alter the region’s demography through Han Chinese resettlement and work-transfer programs continued throughout 2012.
Beijing permits the practice only within the framework of the Movement of the Three Autonomies (MTA), born in 1950 after Mao came to power and expelled both foreign and Chinese church leaders from the Country. Official records indicate that there are 10 million official Protestants in China, all united by the MTA.
In the past 30 years, Protestant house churches have become a major phenomenon, with 50 to 80 million members who meet in homes or otherwise private places to pray, carry out ceremonies and hold assemblies. Their love for free worship has led them to reject official Protestant Churches, guilty in their eyes of “worshipping the party” rather than God.
During the same period, Chinese authorities have tried to suppress this uncontrolled movement by jailing pastors, torturing believers and destroying homes and places of worship. A campaign to force underground communities to join official organisations (such as the MTA) was launched before the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
In 2012, China has launched an all-out campaign against house churches, ministers and believers that should be completed in ten years, the China Aid Association said based on Communist Party sources and documents.
According to documents cited by China Aid, the new eradication campaign includes: January-June 2012, conduct thorough, intensive and secret investigations of house churches throughout the Country and create files on them; in two to three years, concentrate on cleaning up the house churches that have been investigated and have had files created; in 10 years’ time, completely wipe out house churches.
In April 2012, authorities in Hebei Province raided a house church meeting and detained over 50 people. Most were released, but seven, including the church’s preacher, were awaiting criminal sentencing at year’s end.
With the nomination of Zhang Qingli to the head of Chinese political power in Tibet, the repression is destined to continue if not worsen in the coming years as he is determined to fight “to the death” the Dalai Lama and defeat Tibetan “separatism” within five years. On 1 January 2007, a new law went into effect “to regulate these religions.” Approved on 26 September 2006 by the Permanent Government Commission for Tibet, rather than guaranteeing religious freedom, the law actually reinforces the power of Chinese officials in restriction, control and repression of religious beliefs.
Tibet’s largest anti-China protests in almost two decades exploded with demonstrations on 10 March 2008 to mark the 49^th anniversary of the failed 1959 Tibetan uprising against Beijing’s rule and were harshly repressed by Chinese authorities. The Tibetan authorities in exile compiled a confirmed list of the total number of deaths, injuries and arrests or detentions of Tibetans, reported during the peaceful protests in the three traditional provinces of Tibet, from 10 March to 31 May 2008. These figures, based on information and news reports collected from different sources, show that 209 people were killed, 1,000 were injured, more than 5,972 detained, and around 40 were convicted.
The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy documented the known cases of 334 Tibetans sentenced but to its astonishment the cumulative year of sentences (excluding death sentence, suspended death sentence and life imprisonment) of all the known cases of prison sentences between 2008-09 are 1717.5 years and the average mean year of prison term is 5.3 years for each prisoner. If one is to trust reports by the official Chinese media, the total number of Tibetans convicted is 81. On 26 May 2010, the Lhasa Intermediate People’s Court in China sentenced Tibetan Sonam Tsering, 23, to a suspended death sentence, the India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said. The Centre said Sonam Tsering is the seventh Tibetan so far to be sentenced to death for the riots, including two already executed.
On 31 January 2013, a court in Aba prefecture in the province of Sichuan sentenced Lorang Konchok, 40, to death with a two-year reprieve, for his role in encouraging eight people to self-immolate, three of whom died from their burns, Xinhua reported. This is the first known death sentence for self-immolations and a further sign that Beijing is responding to the increasing number of fiery protests by criminalising both the protesters and their friends and sympathisers. Xinhua said Lorang Konchok met with one self-immolator on the day before he set himself on fire. It said he recorded the man’s personal information, took his photos and promised to spread information of his self-immolation overseas while conveying his last words to his family. Nearly 100 Tibetan monks, nuns and lay people have set themselves on fire since 2009, usually after calling for religious freedom and the return of their exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. Earlier January, Xinhua reported that police in Qinghai province arrested a Tibetan monk who attempted to self-immolate in November 2012 and another Tibetan man who allegedly encouraged him. The men were arrested on charges of jeopardising public safety and murder.
The Government continued its repression of so-called “cults,” in particular, of practitioners of the Falun Gong. Members of the Falun Gong continue to be arrested, detained and there is evidence that points to some dying from torture and other abuses. Members that refuse to abjure their beliefs often suffer cruel punishments in prison or in re-education work camps and extra-judiciary detention centres.
The documentation on abuses is difficult to confirm within the Country, particularly for a group that has no public profile. Practitioners living abroad confirm the situation that is the result of State-run persecution that began in 1999. Hundreds of thousands – if not millions – remain unlawfully imprisoned in Chinese labour camps and prisons, the largest single population of prisoners of conscience in the Country. Tens of thousands have suffered torture at the hands of police and security agents.
In total, as of May 2013, the official Falun Gong website, en.minghui.org, has recorded 3,690 confirmed deaths of practitioners as a result of various forms of persecution since 1999. Given the difficulty of obtaining information from China, the actual death toll is likely significantly higher.
According to the Falun Dafa Information Center, several deaths in recent years are clearly connected to an intensified three-year “transformation” campaign launched by Communist Party leaders in mid-2010, targeting Falun Gong practitioners across China. The campaign’s stated goal is to “transform” 75 percent of all known practitioners, who number in the tens of millions despite twelve years of brutal suppression. Specifically, the campaign calls upon security forces to go into “villages and households” to “educate and conquer” Falun Gong practitioners.
The Human Rights Council, in its 2009 Universal Periodic Review of human rights in China, recommended that China reduce the number of crimes carrying the death penalty. China reserved comment until the 11th session, in 2011. A number of delegates urged China to rectify the fact that it is neither transparent in its processes of justice nor proportionate in its use of the death penalty, and these delegates ultimately urged China to abolish the death penalty.
On 20 December 2012, China voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.