China Makes Ultimate Punishment Mobile

By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

 

Jinguan Group

 

Twenty-five years later, in 2004, Zhang met retribution once more, after his conviction for double murder and rape. He was one of the first people put to death in China's new fleet of mobile execution chambers.

The country that executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined last year is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections. Unlike the United States and Singapore, the only two other countries where death is administered by injection, China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped "death vans" that shuttle from town to town.

Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely. The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China "promotes human rights now," says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van in which "Devil" Zhang took his final ride.

For years, foreign human rights groups have accused China of arbitrary executions and cruelty in its use of capital punishment. The exact number of convicts put to death is a state secret. Amnesty International estimates there were at least 1,770 executions in China in 2005 - vs. 60 in the United States, but the group says on its website that the toll could be as high as 8,000 prisoners.

The "majority are still by gunshot," says Liu Renwen, death penalty researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a think tank in Beijing. "But the use of injections has grown in recent years, and may have reached 40%."

China's critics contend that the transition from firing squads to injections in death vans facilitates an illegal trade in prisoners' organs.

Injections leave the whole body intact and require participation of doctors. Organs can "be extracted in a speedier and more effective way than if the prisoner is shot,"

says Mark Allison, East Asia researcher at Amnesty International in Hong Kong. "We have gathered strong evidence suggesting the involvement of (Chinese) police, courts and hospitals in the organ trade."

China's refusal to give outsiders access to the bodies of executed prisoners has added to suspicions about what happens afterward: Corpses are typically driven to a crematorium and burned before relatives or independent witnesses can view them.

Chinese authorities are sensitive to allegations that they are complicit in the organ trade. In March, the Ministry of Health issued regulations explicitly banning the sale of organs and tightening approval standards for transplants.

Even so, Amnesty International said in a report in April that huge profits from the sale of prisoners' organs might be part of why China refuses to consider doing away with the death penalty.

"Given the high commercial value of organs, it is doubtful the new regulations will have an effect," Allison says.

 

Falun Gong, a quasi-religious movement that's outlawed in China, claims thousands of their imprisoned members have been murdered with their vital organs taken out to supply a booming trade in transplants.

The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Hong Kong reported on July 1 that Ms. Li Shimei of Hefei City in Anhui Province, who already had a child but was seven months pregnant with twins, was sent to the hospital for an induced labor under China's One-Child Family Policy. { Editors' Note: Under China's One-Child policy, families are prohibited from having more than one child. Generally women pregnant with a second child are forced to have abortions. ]

Fearing for her safety and the lives of her unborn children, she refused the forced induction. She argued with the staff and subsequently died after falling from the second story of a hospital building.

The Information Center said that on the afternoon of June 21 in Yaohai district, Hefei City, Anhui Province, 18 people from the Tongling Road Family Planning Office suddenly entered Ms. Li Shimei's home and forceably took her away to the Hefei Shuguang Hospital for induction of labor. Because Ms. Li Shimei was already seven months pregnant with twins, and because family members were barred from visiting her, she was suspicious that the proposed induced labor was a ploy to eliminate her unborn twins. She therefore refused to comply.

However, the doctors and the family planning office staff still demanded that she undergo the operation. When the staff attempted to force her, Ms. Li Shimei struggled and somehow fell from the hospital's second floor. She died of injuries from the fall in early morning hours of June 22.

The Information Center learned that there were many large bruises on Li's body; it appeared that she was severely beaten by the family planning office staff while in detention.

The Information Center believes that Li Shimei's case reflects the gross violations of human rights inherent in the enforcement of China's family planning policy. Detaining Li Shimei in that fashion violates the Chinese Constitution, while forcing her to accept an abortion while seven months pregnant with twins violates human decency.

Forced Abortions and Murder.
Organ harvesting and black market sales. Slavery and more.

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