The city of Beijing will use only lethal injections to execute condemned prisoners instead of shooting them, state media said yesterday.
The Beijing Municipal High People’s Court is preparing for the change by the end of this year by training police and medical staff to administer the injections, the China Daily newspaper said. The change applies only to the Chinese capital, following similar changes in other areas.
China executes more people every year than any other country in the world, with 5,000 executions expected to take place this year, according to the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights monitoring group.
Beijing began using lethal injections in June 2000 to execute some criminals, the paper said, but will now execute all prisoners this way.
Hu Yunteng (胡雲騰), director general of the research bureau of the Supreme People’s Court, told the newspaper that lethal injections are considered more humane.
“Lethal injection ... is considered more humane as it reduces criminals’ fear and pain compared with a gunshot execution,” he was quoted as saying.
Beijing now executes most prisoners by shooting them, but it is unknown whether sentences are carried out by firing squad or a single shot.
Hu told the China Daily that lethal injections are already used for only a small number of executions throughout China, but no figures were given.
Rights group Amnesty International has opposed the expansion of China’s lethal injection program, calling for an end to the death penalty in the country.
Since 2007, every death sentence passed in China must be reviewed by the Supreme People’s Court before it is carried out.
The high court had relinquished the right of final review to speed up hearings and executions during an anti-crime drive in the 1980s. The court’s right was restored in January 2007 following a series of scandals involving miscarriage of justice and false prosecutions.
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