This is scary as hell.
A Chinese man jailed and badly beaten for his wife’s murder has been freed after she turned up not only alive but with another husband, domestic media have said, revealing a brutal arbitrariness to China’s legal system.
She Xianglin’s wife, Zhang Zaiyu, disappeared after a domestic dispute in 1994 and when a woman’s body was found in a local reservoir, She was detained on suspicion of killing his wife, the China Daily said.
The body was so decomposed it could not be identified, but a local court found She, a former part-time police officer from central Hubei province, guilty of murder and sentenced him to death.
A provincial court later commuted the sentence to 15 years in prison.
She, 39, was coerced into confessing to her murder and badly beaten in prison, the China Daily said.
International human rights groups say police torture is widespread in China and that suspects are held for long periods without trial. But it is rare for a victim, or the domestic media, to go public about police brutality.
She told the Beijing News that when he was first apprehended, police took him to a remote house and interrogated him for 11 days. He was given just two bowls of rice a day, nearly no water, prevented from sleeping and threatened with death.
“A policeman put his gun to my head and said, ‘Believe me, I could shoot you right now’,” She was quoted as saying from a prison hospital bed, where he was receiving a physical check before being released on Friday.
He said he did not remember making a confession, though the local court that ruled on his case was told he had.
The China Daily said photographs published since She’s release showed he had been severely beaten while in jail and his legs and fingers broken.
I hope the wife gets hers for allowing this to happen. Talk about selfish, and talk about Kafkaesque.
1
By Bing
He was lucky, wasn’t he? He is alive! There happened to be another story recently about how a man, accused of raping and murdering a woman some years ago and sentenced to death and quickly executed, turned out to be innocent, because a suspect arrested recently for other crimes admitted this case. The accused young man once told his mother before his execution that he was tortured and forced to admit the crime.
If changing government and bringing democracy can save China from sins like this, we’d love to do it at any expense. The problem is, as I increasingly understand, the communism rule over the last 50 years has destroyed the traditional moral basis of many Chinese, just like what the Manchu Qing court did to Han Chinese several hundreds years ago. This is something that can not be easily saved.
April 4, 2005 @ 6:16 pm | Comment
2
By richard
At least stories like this are being told, and outrage against such flagrant injustices in CHina is growing. The best example was the incredibly horrific murder of the young man in Guangzhou a couple of years ago, all becuase he went out to play video games and forgot his ID card. His brutal murder by the police became such a huge story (thank God for the Internet) that the CCP was forced to do away with its loathesome vagrancy law, where police could basically lock anybody up for no reason (and it’s just as loathesome when Americans do it, as in Guantanamo Bay). The young man’s murderers were sentenced to death. But I suspect there are far more stories like this, and that precious ferw ever get reported. How many other innocent man are languishing in Chinese jails thanks to torture-induced confessions? Heartbreaking.
April 4, 2005 @ 8:31 pm | Comment
3
By pete
Bing your point is meaningful. From my experiences of teaching and working in China for a few years, I think there is an absence of moral
standards in China. The thing I do not know is whether this pre-dates New China of 1949 and was endemic to China over the centuries or if a change in values and morals was caused by the attitudes occuring after 1949.
April 4, 2005 @ 10:48 pm | Comment
4
By Other Lisa
well, heavens, speaking of morals or lack thereof, here in the US, we kill people in Texas without proper evidence all the time. In China, where the rule of law is even shakier, it’s not suprising that this sort of thing happens. What’s surprising is that mistakes are ever caught and corrected.
The death penalty is wrong, IMO. It is the definition of immoral. You cannot hope to redress an incorrect judgment, once you’ve committed it.
April 5, 2005 @ 12:20 am | Comment
5
By bellevue
That similar but more tragic case Bing mentioned took place in Hebei province, in which 19-year-old Nie4 got a swift execution for the crime he never commited. The story broke to media couple of months ago, but now everything go silence again.
Legitimacy aside, death penalty carried out under such corrupt and crass legal system is always prone to kill a wrong guy. In response to criticism, premier Wen Jiabao reaffirms in recent NPC session that China has no plan to abolish the capital punishment.
Even for the pure sake of self-serving , to properly address the wrongful conviction cases like this and Mr. Nie’s will only benefit the government. It surprises me that the government is reluctant to do the minimal, despite the uproar on the Internet. One has to admit that the entire regime is probably beyond reform, and whatever the GDP growth is this year won’t be helpful.
April 5, 2005 @ 12:39 am | Comment
6
By JR
Bing your point is meaningful. From my experiences of teaching and working in China for a few years, I think there is an absence of moral
standards in China. (This is a pretty strong statement to call people in China amoral.)
The thing I do not know is whether this pre-dates New China of 1949 and was endemic ( in other word you say this amoral behavior is unique to Chinese culture) to China over the centuries or if a change in values and morals was caused by the attitudes occuring after 1949.
Posted by pete at April 4, 2005 10:48 PM
April 5, 2005 @ 12:44 am | Comment
7
By Sinosplice
Not that She
I was reading an entry on Peking Duck about a man with the last name name of She who got a harsh lesson in police “justice.” This sentence made me pause: > She, 39, was coerced into confessing to her murder and badly beaten in prison, the China Daily s…
April 6, 2005 @ 1:10 am | Comment
8
By Pieman
I taught this story to my university class today, and the students managed to get quite involved in the lesson. At the end I wrapped up with the question “Do you support capital punishment?” About two-thirds of the students raised their hands. “Did reading about this case influence your views in any way, seeing that if the initial death sentence had been carried out, She Xianglin would have been wrongfully killed rather than imprisoned?” A resounding ‘no!’ came from the students in unison. Unfortunately time was up, so I didn’t have time to delve deeper, but I wonder if anyone could shed any light on this rather surprising response from two separate groups of students, who until now I had considered quite boringly predictable?
April 6, 2005 @ 7:30 am | Comment
9
By bellevue
This is hardly surprising to me. It reveals the culture of violence the Chinese communists has spent decedes to nuture. And the violence has won. They didn’t even try to disguise it under the name of ‘culture of life’ or something else. They are for death penalty, for forced abortion, for invading Taiwan, for any social control in the name of stability. I doubt how much you can change that in a language class, but keep trying. Something got to be done about it, but don’t expect a quick result.
April 6, 2005 @ 7:37 pm | Comment
10
By nicole
who gives??? chinese are taking over the united states cuz they reproduce so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! go back to ur own countries gays
May 16, 2005 @ 8:11 pm | Comment