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In China, legal reforms fail to reach Uyghurs on death row

While death sentences decrease across the country, punishment grows tougher for minority Muslims in Xinjiang
In China, legal reforms fail to reach Uyghurs on death row

A still image taken from TV footage shows the trial of three Uyghurs sentenced to death on June 16 in Urumqi for their roles in an October 2013 attack on the edge of Beijing's Tiananmen Square (File photo)

Published: October 22, 2014 09:42 AM GMT
Updated: October 21, 2014 11:17 PM GMT

When Husanjan Wuxur, Yusup Umarniyaz and Yusup Ahmat faced trial on terrorism charges in a Xinjiang court on June 16, their fate was all but certain.

Maintaining China’s 99.9-percent conviction rate, the judge found all three Uyghur men guilty of a deadly attack in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square last October and sentenced them to death. No independent media or international observers were permitted inside the Urumqi courthouse.

On August 23, Wuxur, Umarniyaz and Ahmat were executed.

Lawyers and rights groups say they are concerned that the recent spate of Xinjiang-related executions and death sentences undermines recent legal reforms that had prompted a sharp decline in executions recently in China.

On Monday, China advocacy group Dui Hua estimated another reduction last year. About 2,400 people were in 2013 put to death, the US-based organization said. The figure is still more than three times the total number in the rest of the world combined but represents a significant decline on the estimated 7,000 executions in China in 2006, the year before a number of legal reforms were introduced. 

Meanwhile, less than five months after Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a ‘strike hard’ campaign against terrorism in restive Xinjiang, China has handed down death sentences on close to 40 Uyghurs and executed at least 20, according to state media. Hundreds of civilians, police and government officials have died in separatist attacks this year, which Beijing blames on growing Islamic extremism in China’s northwestern-most region.

“For sure what we’ve seen in regards to terrorism is that [the number of] people receiving the death penalty has increased dramatically,” said William Nee, a Hong Kong-based China researcher for Amnesty International, which runs a worldwide campaign against capital punishment.

“We’re very worried about this from multiple angles,” he added.

The week after Xi’s promise in May to use “extremely tough measures and extraordinary methods”, China held two mass trials for the first time since the 1990s. The second, on May 27, handed down at least three death sentences on charges including “violent terrorism”, according to state news agency Xinhua. Altogether 55 people were tried and found guilty - most on lesser charges - as 7,000 people watched at the stadium in Yining City, Xinjiang.

Amnesty International and Chinese lawyers interviewed by ucanews.com said the return of mass trials is part of a wider recent decline in legal standards.

“As far as we know, the Uyghurs who were given death sentences had their lawyers appointed by the local legal department, no independent lawyers are allowed to defend them,” said rights lawyer Li Fangping, who has defended Uyghurs on lesser charges. “Not only were independent lawyers not allowed to engage in the death sentence cases in Xinjiang, but also independent media were not allowed to report the cases. The authorities want to control this information.”

Trials like that of Wuxur, Umarniyaz and Ahmat have been broadcast live on state-run CCTV across China. But independent media and international observers have been banned from courtrooms hearing Xinjiang-related terrorism cases.

Nee says he believes mass trials and convictions of Xinjiang terrorism suspects beamed live across the country serve a double purpose for the Chinese Communist Party.

“On the one hand, it’s a message to the Han community, and then it’s also meant to be a threat or a message of intimidation towards people who are considered to be terrorists. It’s very much for public consumption,” he said.

In early January, Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti gave an interview to Australia’s ABC television in which he challenged Beijing’s official version of events during the Tiananmen Square attack — among other criticisms of the government — and was detained 12 days later. Last month, the same Urumqi court that sentenced Wuxur, Umarniyaz and Ahmat to death for the attack condemned Tohti to life in prison on charges of separatism.

“Almost all of the human rights lawyers I have spoken with now have a negative opinion of the legal system, they say it is going backwards,” said Mo Shaoping, a commercial and human rights lawyer who runs a law firm in Beijing.

Otherwise, progress on legal reforms — particularly on use of the death penalty — has been significant in recent years, he added.

People hold a demonstration for Uyghur rights in Paris (AFP Photo/Boris Horvat)

 

Amid growing criticism outside the country, China ceased removing internal organs from executed prisoners for donation in May, 2007. Since then, in theory, written consent is required from the prisoner and their family before execution.

In August 2010, China reduced the number of categories that incur the death penalty from 68 to 55 and there is speculation this will be reduced again in the near future.

This has been viewed as something of a symbolic gesture given only a handful of these categories — particularly murder, terrorism and drug-dealing — have resulted in death sentences in recent years.

The key reform has been a review process which means the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing reviews every death penalty handed down in provincial court, prompting restraint in lower courts and a dramatic estimated decline in executions – the actual number remains a state secret in China.

“The recent attitude when it comes to handing down sentences is: ‘be cautious’,” said Mo.

Since January 2007, the Supreme People’s Court has built up a team of more than 400 judges at five new attached courts whose sole task is to review death sentences.

During the review process, special judges will often interview the defense lawyer and the convicted prisoner, sometimes by live camera feed from the prisoner’s holding cell, said Mo.

Last year, the Supreme People’s Court overturned a death sentence handed down on a woman found guilty of murdering her abusive husband in Sichuan province in November, 2010.

Typically reviews take six months, or as long as two years in complicated cases.

Wuxur, Umarniyaz and Ahmat were executed just 68 days after they were sentenced to death for the attack on Tiananmen Square, and Chinese state media has rarely mentioned a standard review of other similar cases.

Last month, the Supreme People’s Court Vice President Shen Deyong urged courts in Xinjiang to “speed up” trials of terror suspects while maintaining that cases involving ethnic minorities in China should be handled “no differently” from any other, according to Xinhua.

“The process has definitely been sped up,” said Amnesty’s Nee. “With the ‘strike hard’ campaign in Xinjiang, that would be the huge anomaly, in a way, where the oversight that seems to be getting better in China in general seems to be absent here.”

As Xi’s administration fights an expanding, violent separatist campaign in Xinjiang, the primary drag on the legal system remains the same old problem, said lawyer Mo: political interference.

“The judicial system is not independent from the leadership of the party. So therefore we have to look at everything in the justice based on this reality,” he said.

While it remains a topic of debate as to why the government has recently refined its legal system — commentators say a combination of international pressure and efforts by Chinese lawyers have helped — there is wide agreement that Xinjiang remains among the toughest issues to address with Beijing. Few channels for dialogue exist.

Among them is Dui Hua, which has helped free hundreds of political prisoners by communicating directly with officials in Beijing.

“I have raised the names of Uyghurs detained for ‘splittism’ (the Chinese government’s term for separatism) but have not specifically raised executions in Xinjiang,” Dui Hua’s founder John Kamm said by email.

European countries including France and Germany have a regular rights dialogue with China, but results have been “limited”, particularly on the most sensitive issues, said Markus Loening, Germany’s Human Rights Commissioner until the end of last year.

“The death penalty has been a major issue at each of these dialogues,” he said. “We have been urging the Chinese government to abolish and restrict the use of it as much as possible until abolishment. We also made the case that defendants must have a fair trial.”

Uyghur activists outside of China say that recent Xinjiang-related trials have been anything but.

Rather than contain the problem, China’s manipulation of the judiciary is making things worse, said Alim Seytoff, director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project based in Washington DC.

“The increased use of the death penalty by the Chinese government will not deter the Uyghur people’s yearning for freedom and democracy,” he said. “As the PRC’s founder Mao Zedong once said: ‘Where there is repression, there is resistance.’ It is a vicious cycle.”

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