China Urged to Curb Executions Ahead of Olympics

A global coalition of rights groups urged China on Monday to curb use of the death penalty ahead of the Olympics, but noted that judicial reforms had led to a "significant" drop in the number of executions since last year.

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty handed a petition to Beijing's liaison office in Hong Kong carrying the signatures of 256,000 people from 23 countries, calling on Chinese President Hu Jintao to grant a moratorium on executions.

The coalition said 80 percent of the world's executions in 2006 took place in China, a situation Beijing needed to improve as part of its human rights commitments in hosting this year's Summer Games and in line with a universal trend toward abolishing the death penalty.

"A positive legacy for the Beijing Olympics can only be achieved when China's world record of executions comes to an end," the coalition said in an open letter.

The U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation, which seeks the release of political prisoners in China, estimates that 7,500-8,000 people were put to death in China in 2006, making it the world's most prolific state executioner.

China has however been slowly reforming its harsh sentencing policies, prompted by a public outcry over a series of high-profile and erroneous death sentences in recent years.

In January 2007, the Supreme People's Court regained the power of final approval of death penalties, devolved to provincial high courts in the 1980s, and it promised to apply the ultimate punishment more carefully.

"We do believe the Supreme Court review has led to a significant reduction in the number of executions," said Mark Allison, China researcher for Amnesty International, which is part of the Coalition.

He added though that the review had greatly increased the workload of the top court and had led to a backlog in cases.

State media have said the Supreme People's Court rejected 15 percent of the death penalties it reviewed in 2007, citing poor evidence and procedural errors.

In a recent report, Amnesty said that at least 470 people had been executed, and a further 1,860 sentenced to death, in China last year, but with statistics on executions remaining a state secret Allison said it was impossible to accurately gauge what kind of impact the reforms have made.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said recently that China had no plans to scrap the death penalty.

The death penalty now applies to more than 60 offences in China, including many non-violent and economic crimes.