Friday, March 7, 2003
China adopting mobile "execution vans" for capital punishment
Agence France-Presse Beijing, March 7
China has developed a "mobile execution vehicle" to make capital punishment easier to deliver, state press said on Friday.
China is also increasingly adopting lethal injections as a "more humane" method of carrying out death sentences, the Beijing Today reported. The judicial department in southwestern Yunnan province has developed 18 special execution vans that distribute lethal injections to criminals on death row, the paper said.
The $60,000 vehicles have been sent to Yunnan's 17 intermediate courts, so the Chinese practice of immediately carrying out executions after sentencing can be done without the usual trip to the execution ground.
"Two farmers from Yunnan province, Liu Huafu, 21, and his accomplice Zhou Chaojie, 25, benefited from the latest advance in China's judicial system last Thursday afternoon," the paper said.
The two had been sentenced to death for trafficking heroin, the paper said. Yunnan is the centre of China's heroin industry.
"The use of lethal injection shows that China's death penalty system is becoming more civilized and humane," Zhao Shijie, chairman of the Yunnan Supreme Court told the paper.
Lethal injections only require four people to assist in the execution while the usual practice of death by firing squad needs many guards not only at the execution site, but along the road to the site, it said. China executes more criminals every year than the rest of the world combined, human rights groups have said.
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