China, where you can be shot for tax evasion

China executes four times as many people as the rest of the world put together, writes GEOFFREY WANSELL.

The exact toll is a closely-guarded 'state secret', but estimates range from more than 1,700 to as high as 10,000 a year. At least 60 per cent of public executions are carried out with a single gunshot to the back of the head.

No fewer than 68 crimes are punishable by death in China, including tax evasion, fraud and bribery.

An estimated 90 per cent of the Chinese population support the death penalty, despite the brutality involved.

Authorities also go to great lengths to ensure the killing goes smoothly, with no danger of a doomed prisoner suddenly haranguing the crowd about the unfairness of his trial.

One female prisoner is known to have had her vocal cords cut before she was led out to be killed. But the horror of a Chinese execution does not end with death.

The relatives of the victim may well be offered the bullet that killed their loved one, and then charged the 30p it cost.

They will be also refused access to the corpse. The gruesome explanation for this is that many execution victims have their organs 'harvested' by hospital staff on the orders of police and judges supervising the executions.

The Chinese Government insists officially that such harvesting is entirely illegal, but it is still big business. A heart or liver can fetch as much as £30,000 on the black market.

There are also persistent reports that high-ranking officials who may be in need of an organ transplant make their needs known to the executing officials in their area, who make sure their demands are satisfied.

It is one reason why the Chinese still prefer to use a gunshot to the head – for the damage to the body is far less than it would be from a conventional firing squad. Indeed China's refusal to give outsiders access to the bodies of executed prisoners has increased the suspicion that this is why they are not given to the relatives.

After the 'harvesting', the corpses are usually driven to a crematorium and burned before anyone can view them.

Amnesty International said in a report in 2006 that the huge profits from the sale of prisoners' organs could be part of the reason China refuses to consider doing away with the death penalty.

But author and China expert Jonathan Mirsky says: 'The Chinese do not like to be told what to do by anyone in the outside world. They don't like outside interference – and they show that by not yielding to international pressure, no matter how intense'.

Amnesty also told the Daily Mail yesterday: 'We have serious concerns about whether anyone who has been convicted and sentenced to death has had a fair trial.'

What is not in doubt is that there is a brutal tradition of execution in China – notably in the notorious 'death by a thousand cuts', a form of torture that was finally outlawed only in 1905.

The condemned person was killed by using a knife to methodically remove parts of the body over an extended period.

The horrific process sometimes began with the gouging of the eyes – so the victim could not see what would happen next.

From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1238454/Akmal-Shaikh-Briton-executed-Chinese-firing-squad-body-returned.html (at the bottom)