China sacks prosecutors as courts face 'crisis'

BEIJING, Oct 31 (Reuters) A China legal expert warned today that a crisis facing the country's legal institutions could be destabilising, while China's chief justice has blasted official corruption in the midst of a purge against scores of prosecutors.

In a report submitted to China's legislature, Chief Justice Xiao Yang pledged that crooked judges would be punished in an effort to boost public confidence in the rule of law.

''Corruption has made an extremely bad impression among the general public and tarnished the reputation of the courts,'' Xiao said in comments carried in state media.

Last week, several former judges in the eastern province of Anhui were tried for taking bribes, the latest casualties of a crackdown on corruption that has highlighted the scale of official abuses.

China's prosecutor-general, Jia Chunwang, also said this week that 91 prosecutors had been punished in the past year-and-a-half for violating procedures while carrying out criminal investigations, adding that since 2003, 275 had been sacked.

China has been implementing piecemeal reforms to its criminal legal system, but analysts say corruption runs deep and the public is increasingly disillusioned by the lack of recourse it has through the courts.

''The courts aren't credible, increasingly, to people in China, who know more and more about how their legal system functions,'' Jerome Cohen, a China legal expert told the Foreign Correspondents' Club.

That could hurt the Communist leadership's goal of building a ''harmonious society'' -- the catch-phrase of President Hu Jintao as he seeks to address instability fuelled by corruption, land grabs and a yawning gap between rich and poor.

''If you really want social stability and harmony, then you must have adequate institutions, including legal institutions,'' Cohen said.

''If you don't let lawyers help people to use these institutions then you're fighting your own desire to achieve stability -- you're creating more instability.'' Earlier this year, China's government-controlled All-China Lawyers Association announced curbs on lawyers who represent protesters, demanding that those who take on ''mass cases'' brought by groups of 10 or more must accept the association's guidance.

Lawyers advocating for Chen Guangcheng, a legal activist who opposed forced abortions and was jailed in August, were repeatedly harassed and roughed up when they travelled to the coastal province of Shandong to visit him and his family.

Gao Zhisheng, one of the lawyers who campaigned for Chen's release, has himself been charged with inciting subversion.

Cohen said he was holding out hope that there was enough dissatisfaction with the legal system to inspire major reforms at the 17th Party Congress, a five-yearly Communist Party meeting set for late 2007.

''Are they going to call for legal reform, and is it going to only be marginal stuff, or is the party going to face up to the need for surgery,'' he asked.

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