Three Chinese businessmen were all allegedly engaged in the same racket: they made fortunes for their companies by forging Value Added Tax (VAT) invoices. Earlier this year, the three were convicted of fraud. The sentence was death by a single bullet fired to the back of the head by a prison executioner.
More recently, on August 27th, 30 men in the city of Shenzhen were found guilty of a series of crimes, including murder, robbery and dealing in firearms. Without any time to appeal, all were put on trucks, taken to a field and put to death by firing squad in the biggest mass execution in recent years.
These types of cases - capital punishment for non-violent crimes and mass executions without appeal - make China unique. The Chinese judicial system's way of death is one of the main concerns of Mrs Mary Robinson, who is making the first ever visit to China this week by a UN Human Rights Commissioner.
The UN Commission in April voted to urge countries to put a moratorium on executions and work towards abolishing the death penalty. However, there is little sign that China which, along with the US, opposed the move is taking heed.
Mrs Robinson vowed at the time of the vote to raise the issue of executions during her official visit to China and yesterday she discussed court procedures when she met Mr Zhu Mingshan, vice-president of the Supreme People's Court which confirmed the death sentence for VAT fraud on the three businessmen in April.
It was probably no coincidence that Amnesty International chose the occasion of Mrs Robinson's visit to release yesterday its estimate of the number of people put to death by the Chinese state last year.
China sentenced 3,152 people to death and carried out 1,876 executions last year, the international human rights body said. This was more than the rest of the world combined and probably less than the real figure as many executions are not reported in the Chinese media. The total number is a state secret.
This was a fall from the 4,367 confirmed executions in 1996 for crimes ranging from murder to tax fraud and cattle rustling at the peak of the anti-crime campaign, though Amnesty said they "are comparable to the figures for the previous three years". A San Francisco-based human rights researcher, Mr John Kamm, also said last week that senior supreme court officials used the expression "big, big drop" in describing the fall in the number of executions between 1996 and last year.
Amnesty also criticised trial procedures in China, saying "the inadequacies which lead to unfair trials, such as the admissibility of confessions extracted through torture, lack of early access to proper legal advice, and the indecent haste with which some trials are carried out, still mean that defendants are denied standards of justice which are set out in international conventions".
It welcomed changes in the criminal law to reduce capital sentences and a requirement to appoint a lawyer for an accused no later that 10 days before the trial. However, it claimed this provision was not being applied properly, citing one alleged case where a lawyer was frog-marched from court for robustly defending his client.
Mrs Robinson will not visit any prisons or labour camps during her nine-day tour. She is focusing on meetings with officials and members of state-sanctioned organisations, she told reporters. It would not be "appropriate" to make such inspections.
UN officials will do on-the-ground investigations and establish contact with dissidents. The invitation to visit China was apparently extended on the understanding that it would take place in a spirit of constructive dialogue.
Mrs Robinson today leaves Beijing for an overnight journey to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, where she will meet officials and visit a Buddhist monastery. She will proceed to Shanghai on Friday.
Reuters adds: A lavish staging of Puccini's opera Turandot literally took Beijing by storm on Monday night as the heavens opened and pelted the outdoor performance with hailstones and rain. More than 2,000 guests, many of them glitterati from Europe and Asia who had flown in for the operatic extravaganza, fled the outdoor theatre in Beijing's Forbidden City wearing plastic raincoats over their dinner jackets and evening gowns.
As lightning flashed across the sky, conductor Zubin Mehta anxiously looked to the heavens. The downpour brought an abrupt end to the performance at the end of the second of the opera's three acts, washing out a gala event which cost more than $1,000 for some tickets. No refunds were available.
The elaborate $15 million production, which had its premiere on Saturday for a run of eight performances, was directed by China's renowned film director, Zhang Yimou, and has some 1,000 participants, including 350 artists and technicians from Italy. Foreign artists have long sought to perform Turandot in the Forbidden City, the former imperial palace, but this the first time it has been permitted.
Turandot is the masterpiece which composer Giacomo Puccini failed to complete before his death in 1924. While it has gained world acclaim, Turandot was once banned in China.
