Word: china
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...Indeed, the case will have little effect on how China views the death penalty. "While there's some role for international opinion and international engagement with China on capital punishment, I think that the primary motive force for change and progress in the area of capital punishment in China is going to be internal," says Joshua Rosenzweig, Hong Kong-based manager of the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S. human-rights group...
...there are signs of change. In 2007 China's Supreme People's Court resumed reviewing all death-penalty cases following public anger at a number of questionable convictions, among them the case of a man who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for murdering his wife - who later turned up alive. In the first half of 2008, the Supreme People's Court overturned about 15% of the death sentences that were forwarded to it, an official told the state-run China Daily newspaper...
...Rosenzweig says the resumption of high court reviews is "probably the biggest area of progress in China in the past few years." According to a Dui Hua Foundation estimate, the number of prisoners executed annually may have fallen by as much as half from the 10,000 cited by a National People's Congress delegate in 2004. Even with such a decline, China still puts to death more people than the rest of the world combined - about 70% of the global total in 2008, according to Amnesty International...
...exact number is guarded as a state secret. Some scholars are urging more openness. Chen Guangzhong, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, wrote an article in the prominent Chinese publication Southern Weekend earlier this month arguing that the government should make execution statistics public. "Despite its sensitivity, [the death penalty] is an area that has been able to be discussed to a certain extent within the Chinese media by legal experts," says Rosenzweig, "which is one reason why I think that's where the force for progress will come, from within China." (Watch "Obama...
That's of little comfort to members of Shaikh's family. On Wednesday they expressed "grief at the Chinese decision to refuse mercy" and thanked "all those who tried hard to bring about a different result," according to a statement released by Reprieve. But China's willingness to at least discuss the death penalty offers the slim hope that in the future it will become less of a source of anger and dismay at home and abroad.- With reporting by Jessie Jiang / Beijing...