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| Death-Row Lawyer Spearheads Budding China Debate |
| By Retuers |
| Published: 03/05/2003 |
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From his office in Beijing, lawyer Tian Wenchang cuts an unlikely figure for someone trying to help some of China's many death row inmates. Families of monied criminals, often convicted for economic crimes, travel from afar to seek help from the elegantly dressed lawyer who strives to save convicted criminals from death, mostly by bullet, occasionally by lethal injection. Tian, now shuttling back and forth from the southern island of Hainan to help rescue a convicted company official embroiled in a $7 million dollar corruption case, for a $12,000 fee, says he has saved about 10 convicts from death over the years. But perhaps most striking about the managing partner of King and Capital Lawyers is his willingness to talk candidly about cutting down the huge numbers of people China executes -- a topic the tightly controlled media are showing rare signs of addressing. Tian's solution, long echoed privately by a tight circle of academics and legal experts, calls modestly for abolishing capital punishment for economic crimes, which he said only accounted for a fraction of death-row cases. 'When facing profits, dying is not enough of a deterrent,' said Tian. 'Money and life cannot be viewed together.' Calls for reducing executions have even reverberated in government circles, he said. Still, prospects for really following through in a country he believes executes more than the rest of the world combined, were dim. 'Last week, I said in front of a group of experts and judges, since we have the same opinion, why can't anything be done?' he said of abolishing capital punishment for economic crimes. 'In reality, it's hard for legislators to accept this idea. We still face the same problem, that legislation needs democracy.' Chinese experts deny knowledge of just how many people the world's most populous nation puts to death each year, but many do not deny alarming figures reported by foreign rights groups who lobby for an end to capital punishment around the world. According to Amnesty International, China executed 2,468 people in 2001, more than all the other countries of the world, including the United States, combined. The most senior official executed for corruption since the Communists swept to power in 1949 was Cheng Kejie, a former vice chairman of parliament, executed in 2000 for taking bribes worth $5 million when he was chief of Guangxi region. Debate about the death penalty has long raged behind closed doors, but rarely seeped into the media. But in December, Southern Weekend, known for testing the boundaries, wrote about a conference organized by the Danish Institute of Human Rights and the law institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It detailed arguments for and against capital punishment put forward by participants in what analysts describe as an unprecedented move by the Chinese media. 'Academics have for a long, long time been more free in their minds than the government so it's no surprise that there could have been this kind of discussion,' said one Western diplomat. 'The new thing is that this was reported in the Chinese media,' he said. 'The significant thing was the open discussion.' Chinese scholars echoed what diplomats describe as the government position that capital punishment might be abolished if social and economic conditions were ripe. 'Most scholars think that to abolish the death penalty, we need to start with rigorous controls,' the newspaper cited academics as saying. 'Then China can gradually abolish it.' The conference sparked outcry from thousands who posted messages in an Internet chat room, said criminal law expert Qu Xinjiu of the China University of Political Science and Law. More than 80 percent said they were against abolishing the death penalty while 76 percent called for capital punishment to include an even wider array of crimes, Qu said. 'Only around 13 percent of Chinese people would agree with getting rid of capital punishment,' he said. For many foreign analysts, some of whom suspect the limited calls for reducing the number of death-row inmates are trying to appease foreign rights groups and governments that have abolished the death penalty, the impact of the budding debate remains difficult to gauge. Even experts calling for change say moves toward abolition are nowhere in sight in a country that has almost always used capital punishment as both a deterrent and punishment. Criminals only ever enjoyed respite during the 23-year reign of Tang dynasty emperor Li Shimin (627-650), when a few more than 10 people were put to death, Qu said. 'In China it would be very difficult to get rid of capital punishment because of our culture, history and society,' said Qu. 'I don't see China getting rid of it in the foreseeable future,' said the advocate of abolishing capital punishment. |
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