China prosecuted nearly 1 million in 2006

Beijing, Mar 14: China prosecuted nearly one million people last year and sent more people to jail than in 2005, officials said and they vowed to keep up the fight on crime while promising to limit executions.

The president of the Supreme People's Court told parliament that judges would continue a crackdown on crime this year.

''Make protecting social stability an important task in criminal trials, and harshly punish according to the law the various crimes that are a major threat to public safety,'' Xiao Yang told the ceremonial parliamentary session yesterday.

The ruling Communist Party has a tradition of ''striking hard'' against crime, with party-controlled police, prosecutors and judges working in concert to mete out harsh punishment. But Chinese citizens are increasingly vocal about their rights, and reports on legal work to the National People's Congress reflected the resulting tensions between order and accountability.

Last year a total of 153,724 people received either sentences of longer than five years or the death penalty, compared with 131,869 in 2005, Xiao said, up by almost a fifth.

Courts sentenced 340,715 people for homicide, robbery, rape and other serious crimes, he said. Reflecting Chinese secretiveness on the matter, he gave no figures for executions.

The number of prosecutions rose some 5 per cent to 999,086, the country's chief prosecutor, Jia Chunwang, said. State media reported last year that courts had acquitted only 0.66 per cent of 6.2 million defendants in criminal trials from 1998 to 2006.

Death Sentence Caution:

But while vowing to stifle crime, Xiao urged courts to show caution in pronouncing death sentences, which China does much more often than any other country.

''At the same time, strictly control and cautiously apply the death sentence and improve ratification procedures and sentencing standards in death penalty cases,'' he said. ''Ensure defendants' procedural rights according to the law.'' China judicially kills about 10,000 people a year, according to the New York-based group Human Rights Watch. Other estimates of annual executions range between 5,000 and 12,000.

Authorities said on Sunday they would slowly reduce the number of executions. ''Our country still cannot abolish the death penalty but should gradually reduce its application,'' said new rules issued by the top court, police ministry and other agencies, and reported by the semi-official China News Agency.

Final say on death sentences was returned to China's highest court at the start of this year, reducing the authority of local judges. The move followed Chinese media reports exposing a slew of wrongful convictions concealed by investigators.

Jia also urged prosecutors to ''strengthen judicial protection of human rights''.

In recent years, Beijing has raised efforts to curb flagrant abuses by law enforcement officials. The new rules urged an end to parading condemned men through the streets to their death.

Reuters

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