Bloody Xi: China named 'world’s top executioner'

Amnesty says more people executed in China than rest of world combined 
The Guardian

China remains the “world’s top executioner” amid a decline in executions worldwide, Amnesty International has said in its annual report on capital punishment.
According to the report, released on Thursday, China implemented “more death sentences than the rest of the world combined”. 

Thousands of executions and death sentences occurred in 2017 in China, where they are considered a state secret.
China aside, executions worldwide dropped again in 2017, with at least 993 recorded in 23 countries – down 4% from 2016 and 39% from 2015.
At least 2,591 death sentences were recorded in 53 countries in 2017 – down from a record high of 3,117 in 2016 – and at least 21,919 people are known to be under a death sentence, Amnesty said. 

The human rights group said the “positive trend” towards ending capital punishment was exemplified by sub-Saharan Africa, where 20 countries have now abolished the death penalty for all crimes. 

Just two countries in the region, Somalia and South Sudan, carried out executions last year.
“The progress in sub-Saharan Africa reinforced its position as a beacon of hope for abolition,” the Amnesty International secretary general, Salil Shetty, said.
Excluding China, 84% of the reported executions last year were carried out in just four countries: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan. Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates resumed executions in 2017.
Iran has the highest known figure despite an 11% drop on 2016, executing at least 507 people, with at least 31 death sentences carried out in public.
The US remained the only country in the Americas to carry out executions, with 23 last year, up slightly from the year before.
Shetty said with the progress in Africa, “the isolation of the world’s remaining executing countries could not be starker”.

Trigger-Happy: China Remains the World’s Top Executioner

How censorship aids China’s execution machine

By William Nee

The executions of Nie Shubin and Jia Jinglong occurred more than 20 years apart, yet the Chinese authorities have used the plight of both men to send starkly different messages on the death penalty.
Nie Shubin, who was executed in 1995 for rape and murder, received a rare posthumous exoneration earlier this month. 

Officials made much of how this wrongful execution had been corrected and that lessons had been learnt. 

State media highlighted how the verdict was overturned based on a presumption of innocence, a principle that China’s judicial system has only just started to recognize.
In 2005, a domestic media outlet revealed that another man, Wang Shujin, confessed to the murder and rape Nie had supposedly committed. 

The news sent shock waves throughout China, and has created immense public interest and media coverage ever since. 

It still took more than a decade of persistent campaigning by Nie’s family, lawyers, journalists, and academics to finally clear his name.
This may seem like an advance for justice, but the authorities did not look kindly on another campaign this past month to spare the life of Jia Jinglong. 

A frantic last-ditch effort on Chinese social media eventually came to nothing. 

Jia, who killed a local village official, was executed on 15 November.
Not only were the authorities intent on ending Jia’s life, they were intent on ending any debate about his plight that – in the view of many -- would have warranted some leniency. 

The same type of activism that brought about a reversal in the verdict for Nie Shubin was not tolerated this time.
On the day Jia Jinglong was executed, the government’s propaganda machine went into overdrive, with state-media describing the campaign to save his life as “attacking judicial authority.” 

Social media posts were heavily censored and state-run press published threatening articles to intimidate Jia’s supporters.
Jia, a farmer in China’s northern Hebei province, killed a local village chief, He Jianhua, on 19 February 2015 with a modified nail gun.
The village chief had ordered the demolition of Jia’s three-story home, which he had just meticulously decorated to prepare for his upcoming marriage. 

Following the murder, Jia reportedly attempted to turn himself in. 

According to supporters, the courts should have considered these potential mitigating factors when deciding whether to execute him.
For Jia’s supporters, China’s default death penalty policy first set out by authorities in 2006 – “killing fewer, killing cautiously” – seemed to hold out a glimmer of hope that the Supreme People’s Court might spare his life.
But state censors made sure that those living in mainland China, were not able to read many of the online articles presenting the legal case as to why Jia’s life should be spared.
Twelve of China’s most prominent legal scholars wrote a passionate open letter asking the country’s Supreme People’s Court to grant Jia a reprieve. 

But their open petition was censored – as were many other posts about Jia Jinglong that were shared on WeChat – China’s main social media platform.
This censorship was accompanied by an ominous editorial in the People’s Daily – the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party – signalling that the online debate had gone too far and that some people could be punished. 

It said that the scope of freedom of expression extended to people talking about cases in private or over meals, but not on the internet, where they could influence public opinion.
The editorial slammed those who spoke out while only “half-understanding” the case, and it warned of consequences for those who harmed the credibility of the legal system or harmed judicial authority by transmitting so-called “untruthful information.”
Nie Shubin’s case showed that the government is taking some positive moves by redressing emblematic cases of wrongful convictions, but the authorities still control the narrative.
China remained the world’s top executioner last year. 

The true extent of the use of the death penalty in the country is unknown as the authorities hide data on death sentences and executions claiming it to be a state secret, manipulate public opinion on specific cases like the Jia Jinglong case, and thereby stymie rigorous debate and empirical analysis.
Such censorship is one of the most ironic and tragic aspects of China’s death penalty system. 

The government demands that people “comprehensively understand” the details of a death penalty case before commenting, and yet the government’s own laws and policies fuel the ignorance it criticizes.
It is this government secrecy, and not the valiant campaigns that attempt to save people like Jia Jinglong from execution, that cause the real harm to the credibility of China’s legal system.