Petition cases rise 23.6% last year in China
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-03-09 10:51

Chinese courts at various levels handled an increasing number of petition cases in 2004, said Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), in Beijing on Wednesday. (click to read highlights of work report of Jia Chunwang, procurator-general of China's Supreme People's Court)

Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme People's Court, delivers a report of China's court system to the third annual session of the 10th National People's Congress in the Great Hall of the People March 9, 2005. [Xinhua]

According Xiao's report delivered to the third annual session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), Supreme People's Court handled 147,665 cases of petitions in 2004, up 23.6 percent year-on-year.

The number of petitions being dealt with by local courts stood at 4.22 million, up 6.2 percent compared to the previous year.

In order to better hear grassroots complaints, China revised its 10-year-old regulation on petitions in January 2005 to strengthen protection of petitioners' legitimate rights.

The revised regulation stipulates "no organization or individual is allowed to retaliate petitioners and offenders will be held to account for his deed."

The revised regulation will take effect as of May 1.

Chinese courts sentence 6 high-ranking officials in 2004

Six officials at provincial or ministerial level were sentenced after being convicted of corruption, bribe-taking, abuse of public funds and dereliction of duty last year, said Xiao Yang.

A total of 772 government officials involving in job- related crimes were given a verdict, including 98 at prefecture level.

The court system, in total, dealt with 24,184 cases involving government officials' graft, bribe-taking and other corrupt activities in 2004, increased by 5.21 percent, said the chief judge.

Death penalty review process to be improved

China will further refine the death penalty review process this year, Xiao Yang said.

Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme People's Court, said in his annual work report that his court will promote reform in the justice system to safeguard justice in jurisdiction.

The president did not elaborate on the details of reforms, but said earlier when answering questions of the Human Rights magazine last month that China strictly controls the application for death sentence and strictly follows the procedures of passing death sentence.

China has implemented the policy of "combining punishment with leniency" and oppose advocacy of "heavy penalty" and "severe punishments", he told the magazine.

"To those convicted guilty of serious crimes, we approved the capital punishment according to law," he told the parliament in his report. "To those convicted of felony crimes but there were circumstances for leniency, we would change the capital punishment to death penalty on probation or life imprisonment according to law."

According to Xiao, China's courts at all levels sentenced a total of 767,951 convicted criminals last year, up 2.8 percent from a year ago. Among the convicted criminals, 19.04 percent were sentenced to more than five years imprisonment, life imprisonment and death penalty.

Some Chinese scholars have proposed abolishing capital punishment, but many others did not agree. The issue has caused a heat debate.

Responding to the call to abolish all death penalty, the China Youth Daily said in a recent report that China should reform its criminal punishment system and set longer years behind bars than the maximum of 20 years imprisonment before death penalty is gradually reduced.

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