Executions need court OK in China

BEIJING — China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined, took a step forward in improving human rights Tuesday by enacting legislation that requires approval from the country's highest court before putting anyone to death.

Human rights activists expressed hope the country will reduce its use of the ultimate penalty. The amendment to China's capital punishment law follows reports of executions of wrongly convicted people and criticism that lower courts have arbitrarily imposed the death sentence.

China is thought to put to death hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people each year for crimes ranging from murder to such nonviolent offenses as tax evasion. Amnesty International says China executed at least 1,770 people in 2005, but the true number is thought to be many times higher.

The London-based rights group on Tuesday cited a senior member of China's national legislature as saying some 10,000 people are executed each year. By Amnesty's figures of known executions, China was responsible for more than 80 percent of the 2,148 people executed last year around the world, including 60 in the United States.

"Clearly the changes are going in the right direction," Mark Allison, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Amnesty, said of the new legislation, which takes effect Jan. 1. "But we're still calling for China to go further — to abolish the death penalty."

China's official Xinhua News Agency hailed the amendment as "the most important reform of capital punishment in China in more than two decades."

The change "deprives the provincial people's courts of the final say on issuing death sentences," the agency said. "Death penalties handed out by provincial courts must be reviewed and ratified by the Supreme People's Court."

The change adopted by the legislature Tuesday enshrines last year's announcement by the Supreme People's Court that it would start reviewing all death sentences, ending a 23-year-old practice of giving the final review to provincial courts.

"It's great news. This is a big step forward for China's legal system and human rights," said Li Heping, a prominent activist lawyer.

"It's going to have a psychological effect on local judges when they are making decisions because they are going to be afraid that if they approve capital punishment, the supreme court will overrule them," Li said.

Jerome Cohen, an American expert on Chinese law, called the new law "encouraging and significant" but said the next challenge will be enforcing the change.