Results tagged “executions”

• Former Beijing airport boss executed in China [AP] "The former head of Beijing airport's management company was executed Friday following his conviction on corruption charges, state media reported. An intermediate court found 60-year-old Li Peiying guilty in February of accepting almost $4 million in bribes and embezzling about $12 million in public funds over the past 14 years, the Xinhua News Agency said."
• Australia Plans to Make Arrangements for Second Hu China Visit [Bloomberg] "Australia will soon be making arrangements for a second consular visit with Rio Tinto Group executive Stern Hu, detained in China for allegedly stealing state secrets, a government spokeswoman said. 'According to the consular agreement, visits must take place at least once per month,' a spokeswoman for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who asked not to be named, said today in an e-mailed statement."
• Uighur unrest shows China's failures - Dalai Lama [Reuters] "Ethnic riots in northwest China have exposed the failings of Beijing's minority policies, and a more "realistic" stance toward Tibetans and others could emerge within a decade, the Dalai Lama said on Thursday. The Tibetan spiritual leader said the Uighur unrest in Xinjiang province in July, in which 197 people died according to the official death toll, showed the need for the Chinese Communist Party to rethink its approach."

• China Daily Assails Prisoner Abuses [NYTimes.com] "Inmates in China’s 2,700 pretrial detention centers suffer bullying and torture at the hands of fellow prisoners and police officers, and some experts want a neutral body to take the centers out of police control to curb the abuses, the state-run English-language newspaper, China Daily, reported on Tuesday."
• Safer Battery Technology Gives China an Edge in Developing Affordable Electric Cars [WSJ] "China’s government is beefing up support for the development of 'new energy' cars, because it thinks China can use electric vehicle technology to leapfrog into the forefront of the global auto industry."
• China spearheads surge in state-sponsored executions [The Independent] "Executions of prisoners almost doubled last year - predominantly because of the Chinese government - according to a report by Amnesty International. Death sentences handed down by China for crimes including tax evasion and bag-snatching represented three-quarters of the 2,390 executions carried out around the world, up from 1,252 in 2007. China's resumption of its death penalty programme comes after a dip in executions during the lead up to the Beijing Olympics that were held last year."

The New Dominion finds something suspiciously awry about the public trial and executions of two Uighur men last Wednesday. While Reuters UK sums up a Radio Free Asia report (published by the New York Times on Saturday) asserting that "The Kashgar Intermediate People's Court sentenced two men — Mukhtar Setiwaldi and Abduweli Imin — to death and immediately executed them after a July 9 public trial in Yengi Sheher county," The New Dominion claims to have translated a Chinese-language article on the trial and executions of the exact same men — for the exact same crime — last November.

RFA claims that on the 9th, these two individuals were executed summarily after a public trial, during which they were accused of plotting terrorist activities and managing a hidden terrorist base of operations starting from August 2005. The plot was broken up when the police raided their hideout in January of 2007. However, we found a Chinese language article describing an uncannily similar trial being conducted in November of last year, with the same charges against the same individuals, with the same result (two summary executions, two delayed executions, and a number of other non-capital sentences). I vividly remember recalling when we looked at the article at the time being quite surprised that no international news agencies were picking up on the execution of alleged East Turkestan terrorists - only to be quite surprised to find out they finally picked up the scent, only 8 months later. We are thus facing a time-traveling trial and execution: did this happen just a few days ago, or did it happen last November?

It is no secret by now. China executes more people than the rest of the world put together (yes, even more than the Islamic world). In fact, Amnesty International says China carries out about 80 percent of the world's total capital punishments, if not more (1,770 people in 2005). The recent UN vote for a moratorium on executions saw a fractious two-day debate between the anti-execution camp led by Italy and the pro-execution camp led by Singapore, which has the ignominious honour of having the highest number of executions per capita in the world (coming from there, we are ashamed). The result of the vote: 104 for, 54 against and 29 abstentions. Opponents of the moratorium included the United States, China and Iran (one rarely finds these three countries in the same camp).