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Chinas Use Of Capital Punishment Human rights framework treats foreign policy as the result of a two-level game in which both domestic and foreign factors have to be considered. The increasing attention given to human rights issues in contemporary foreign policy. At the same time, most states that identify with human rights, including liberal democratic states, are reluctant most of the time to elevate human rights concerns to a level equal to that of traditional security and economic concerns. When states do seek to integrate human rights with these and other concerns, the result is usually great inconsistency in patterns of foreign policy. Different states bring different emphases to their human rights diplomacy, because of such factors as national political culture and perceived national interests. States can be compared along two dimensions pertaining to human rights: extent to which they are oriented toward an international rather than national conception of rights; and extent to which they are oriented toward international rather than national action to protect human rights.
Some countries, however, do not make any effort to protect human rights at all, despite all the pressure that is put on them by the international organizations and government. One of the countries that is known for frequent violations of human rights is China. Recently China has been criticized over the use of its death penalty. Capital punishment has had a long history in China and was well established before the peoples rights in 1949 (Microsoft Encarta).
Today in China the death penalty is used for a wide range of offenses. Capital punishment was widely applied in ancient times; it can be found (c. 1750 B. C. ) in the Code of Hammurabi (Microsoft Encarta). From the fall of Rome to the beginnings of the modern era, capital punishment was practiced throughout Western Europe. The modern movement for the abolition of capital punishment began in the 18 th century. China is second after the United States in death penalties.
While China and the United States use the death penalty, China gives them for less serious crimes. They can give the death penalty for anything, while the US has certain crimes that fit certain punishments. Not all punishments are deem able by death in the US. (Month) According to the Amnesty International Report, China executed more people in 2001 than the rest of the world combined. And in time for the end of the year, China stepped up its executions.
The BBC reported that in only one week of 2001, China executed more than 40 people. The government executed convicted murderers, a government official accused of embezzling more than $ 300, 000, and two people whose crime was apparently starting an illegal Protestant church. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but China is believed to have executed 2, 000 - 5, 000 people in the last 12 months. And it is gearing up for even more executions ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year in February.
As one can see, China uses the death penalty excessively. They use it for some of the smallest crimes, if they do not slow down, there capital punishment rate, they will have no problem keeping there jails empty. Many international and domestic organizations appealed to the Chinese government to abolish the death penalty. The united effort, called the Joint Committee for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, handed petition letters and 1, 200 signatures to the Liaison Office of the Chinese Central Government in Hong Kong.
Amnesty International remains deeply concerned at reports of serious human rights violations committed throughout China. Despite a few positive steps, Chinas new administration has yet to grapple with the basic legal and institutional weaknesses, which allow such violations to continue. The strike hard campaign against crime is one of the attempts of the administration of justice to politically interfere into the death penalty procedure and continue to undermine attempts to establish and strengthen the rule of law. While legal reforms in the commercial sphere have continued apace since Chinas entry to the World Trade Organization in December 2001, little attention has been paid to the reform of other laws or regulations, including the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Laws, which have wide-ranging implications for human rights. Amnesty International concluded that hundreds of thousands of people continue to be detained in violation of their fundamental human rights across the country, death sentences and executions continue to be imposed after unfair trials, torture and ill-treatment remain widespread and systemic, and freedom of expression and information continue to be severely curtailed. Amnesty International remains concerned about the extensive use of the death penalty in China.
While the organization recorded 1, 060 executions in China in 2002, it must be noted that this figure was compiled using only public sources, and that the true figure is likely to be significantly higher. A recent estimate cited by Andrew Nathan and Bruce Gilley based upon internal Chinese Communist Party documents suggests China executes around 15, 000 people per year. Amnesty International is unable to verify these reports but continues to call on the Chinese authorities to make public statistics relating to death sentences and executions imposed nationwide. According to official reports in China, the adoption of lethal injections as a method of execution is spreading rapidly as a humane and civilized alternative to firing squads.
Official reports in March 2003 surrounding the introduction of mobile execution chambers in Yunnan Province also highlighted the comparative cost effectiveness of the method, requiring only four personnel beyond security guards required to guard the vehicle itself. Improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of executions raises further concerns about the death penalty's increased application. (Amnesty International) The world community, along with Amnesty International is concerned with a high number of wrongful executions that take place in China. The death penalty is applied to the innocent, it is arbitrary and biased, it very often lacks sufficient evidence. The process of execution is also horrifying the death row and waiting for death are very cruel and inhumane, there is a lack of evidence for execution as a deterrent for crime, and often use of execution as a political distraction from implementing effective measures to address crime. One of the other issues that arises resentment among Amnesty International staff is the involvement of the medical profession in conducting executions is contrary to medical ethics.
Crimes that at other times might have been punished with a prison term, are now punished with the death penalty that is due to the strike hard. Luo Gan, a politburo standing committee member and director of the Central Committee for the Management of Public Security, announced a one-year extension to the strike hard campaign on 18 July 2003. Pressure mounts on all law-enforcement and legal bodies during strike hard campaigns to process as many cases as possible so as to achieve quick approval, quick arrest, quick trial and quick results. The strike hard campaign presumes that numerous people will be convicted through expedience rather than rigor on the part of the courts. It is also know, that China strategically uses death penalty to celebrate national events.
As Amnesty International reports: two prominent annual peaks in the number of executions appear towards the end of each September as China prepares to celebrate National Day on 1 October, and in June, when in 2003 for example, 54 people were reportedly executed on drugs-related charges in the single week leading up to the World Anti-Drugs Day on 26 June. At an international conference in Hunan Province on the death penalty held jointly by the Chinese Academy of Social Science and the Danish Institute for Human Rights on 9 - 10 December 2002, it was reported the vast majority of Chinese legal scholars in attendance strongly advocated abolition of the death penalty in China. (Month) The participants of the conference debated and discussed complex legal and ethical questions surrounding the use of the capital punishment in China. The discussion of these issues still continues in press. The society is particularly concerned with the flaws in the appeal and review processes for condemned prisoners. In a widely publicized case, a farmer from Shaanxi Province had his death sentence halted four minutes before he was due to be executed after his lawyer gained access to the Supreme Court in Beijing under false pretences and persuaded a judge to review the case. Amnesty International continues to point on the other serious flaws in the Chinese legal system in relation to the death penalty and its appeal and review procedures continue to appear.
Both international governments and Amnesty International shared the deep concern over the execution of Lobsang Dhondup, an ethnic Tibetan, in January 2003 following a closed trial in Sichuan Province. Amnesty International reports: Lobsang Dhondup was convicted on charges including causing explosions, but no details have been made public of the evidence used against him. Official statements on the trial assert Lobsang Dhondup's case touched upon state secrets, and was therefore closed. However, the justification for classifying the case as touching upon state secrets appears to have been a device to exclude observers from the legal process. It is interesting that if Lobsang Dhondup's capital conviction had really been in the category of state secrets, than following the Chinese law would mean that the case should have been referred to the Supreme Court for review. Instead, Lobsang Dhondup was executed hours after his...
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Research essay sample on Death Penalty Capital Punishment
