China Claims Cut in Execution Rates

Only "extremely vile criminals" were executed in China last year, the country's most senior judge declared today, lauding the success of efforts to curb the death penalty.

The decline, estimated by independent analysts to be as great as 30% year-on-year, is thought to be the result of "kill fewer, kill carefully" reforms introduced in early 2006 which gave the supreme court the right to over turn capital sentences handed down by lower courts.

Human rights groups welcomed the fall as a sign of progress, but pointed out that no one knows the actual number of executions because it is a state secret. Even on reported cases, China executes more people annually than the rest of the world combined.

"It's a step in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go,"said John Kamm, the executive director of the United States-based Dui Hua Foundation, an advocacy group for non-violent political prisoners.

He told Reuters that the group's research suggested about 6,000 people were executed last year, 25-30% fewer than in 2006.

Amnesty International recorded 1,010 executions in China in 2006 on the basis of published reports alone â€" 40% lower than the previous year, but still two-thirds of the global total. It believes the real number may have been closer to 8,000.

Xiao Yang, the chief justice of the supreme people's court (SPC), gave no figures for the overall use of the death penalty or the decline as he delivered his annual report.

Speaking to the annual session of the National People's Congress, he said capital sentences were imposed on an "extremely small number of extremely serious and extremely vile criminals posing a grievous threat to society".

Last week, a senior judge at the SPC said the court had rejected 15% of death sentences passed by lower courts. But in her interview with China Peace Web, Huang Ermei also said China would not have the right conditions to abolish the death penalty "for a considerable period of time".

The changes were introduced to allay public disquiet at high-profile miscarriages of justice, and to reflect the lobbying of lawyers,academics and some officials for broader legal reforms.

Xuan Dong, who sentenced more than 1,000 people to death as a judge before quitting to work at the King & Capital law firm in Beijing, argued that there forms had ended a long era of "heavy use" of the death penalty.

"Last year was the second phase, [with] death penalties seriously controlled. The third will be the phase where it disappears completely, but this still needs a very long time," he said, warning that China needed to develop further.

"We still need the death penalty to make sure society is stable, to lessen the number of serious offenses."

Chen Weidong, a professor of law at the Renmin University of Beijing, said that while 68 crimes still carried the death penalty, it was now being used mostly for serious violent offenses.

"I think the road to ending the death penalty is promising, and there is hope. We have to control it strictly, and keep track of it," he said.

In a statement, Amnesty International said: "No one who is sentenced to death in China receives a fair trial in accordance with international human rights standards. Failings include: lack of prompt access to lawyers, lack of presumption of innocence, political interference in the judiciary and failure to exclude evidence extracted under torture."

Xiao also warned today that courts were struggling to keep up with more cases and people's higher expectations of the legal system. He warned that inefficiency, poor enforcement of sentencing, a lack of resources and corruption and abuses in a "small number" of courts were hampering the system.

"We're seeing worsening contradictions between the ever-rising legal demands from the masses of the people and the relative incapacity of the people's courts," Xiao said.