CHINA DISMISSED international calls for clemency yesterday and went ahead to execute Akmal Shaikh, a British man convicted of smuggling four kilos of heroin.
Relatives of Shaikh say he was mentally ill and was duped into committing the crime by the Tajik Mafia.
British prime minister Gordon Brown condemned the execution – China’s first of a European citizen in almost 60 years – saying he was “appalled and disappointed” at the decision.
However, China was defiant. “Nobody has the right to speak ill of China’s judicial sovereignty,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.
“We express our strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition over the groundless British accusations.”
British foreign office minister Ivan Lewis summoned China’s ambassador in London, Fu Ying, to protest at the execution.
“I made clear that the execution of Mr Shaikh was totally unacceptable, and that China had failed in its basic human rights responsibilities in this case,” Mr Lewis said in a statement after what he described as a “difficult conversation”.
The tough language from both sides suggests that this could be the first stage in a bitter diplomatic row, while the case is unlikely to help China’s image in Britain.
At the same time, it could also cause further resentment against the West in China, where many people are annoyed at what they see as “interference” in the country’s domestic affairs.
The European Union also condemned the execution, saying it deeply regretted that China had not heeded repeated calls from the EU and Britain for Shaikh to be spared the death penalty.
Human rights group Amnesty International said the execution “highlights the injustice and inhumanity of the death penalty, particularly is implemented in China”.
China’s decision to brush off calls for clemency is the latest sign of the country flexing its new diplomatic and political muscle, after the jailing of top dissident Liu Xiaobo at Christmas and through the perception generated that it was China’s intransigence that prevented the Copenhagen talks on climate change resulting in deeper cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide than originally hoped.
Following speculation about the method of execution, the Xinhua news agency reported that Shaikh had been killed by lethal injection. China executes more people than the rest of the world put together.
The sentence was carried out at 10.30am local time as scheduled in Urumqi, capital of the far-west region of Xinjiang. Shaikh’s family, including cousins who were in China hoping for a last-minute reprieve, expressed in a statement “their grief at the Chinese decision to refuse mercy”.
There had been repeated attempts to have Shaikh examined by a doctor to assess his mental health, an evaluation which his lawyer said he never received.
Shaikh’s relatives and the British government argued that the former businessman suffered from bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression.
Shaikh (53), a former taxi driver, first learned on Monday from his visiting cousins that he was about to be executed.
His supporters say he was lured to China from a life on the street in Poland by men playing on his dreams to record a pop song for world peace.
Shaikh, who was born in Pakistan but grew up in Britain, was arrested in 2007 for carrying a suitcase packed with 4kg of heroin into China on a flight from Tajikistan.
He was convicted in 2008 after a half-hour trial. In one court appearance during his trial and appeal process, the judges reportedly laughed at his rambling remarks.
The rights group Reprieve, which had tried to stop Shaikh’s execution, said his death was “a sad indictment of today’s world, and particularly of China’s legal system”.
“We at Reprieve are sickened by what we have seen during our work on this case,” said Sally Rowen, legal director of Reprieve’s death penalty team. – (Additional reporting by Reuters)