A public trial in a Chinese sports stadium at which 10 people were sentenced to death shows the desperation of government officials, experts have said, as negative reaction spread online.



Thousands – including children in their school uniforms – crowded into a stadium at the weekend to watch 10 people be sentenced in a public trial in Lufeng, southern China. The accused were then immediately taken away and executed.

Officially, China has banned public trials outside courtrooms, according to regulations from the judiciary, prosecutors’ office and police. But local authorities are still meting out their own brutal brand of justice.

There’s still a lot of support in local governments for these type of public trials. Law professor Michelle Miao

“There’s still a disconnect between elites at the national level who tend to be more liberal and want reform, and local officials who want harsh punishments,” said Michelle Miao, a law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“There’s still a lot of support in local governments for these type of public trials.”

The aggressive measure is a sign that local authorities are frustrated and desperate in their fight against drugs, Miao said. Indeed, the public sentencing was held in one of the country’s most notorious crystal meth manufacturing areas. But given the attention of the most recent public trials, Miao expects officials in Beijing will try to rein in the practice, especially as reactions to the display have been largely negative.

The Beijing News, a liberal-leaning newspaper under a state radio broadcaster, published a commentary titled: “Stop staging the drama of public death sentences.”

“As the most severe sentence, the death penalty must have a minimum amount of humanitarianism,” the opinion piece said. “It is necessary to prevent personal humiliation and other extrajudicial punishments, otherwise it is a serious shame on the serious rule of law.”

Many posts on Chinese social media were more forceful in their condemnations, with some saying public trials “showed a fair legal system had completely vanished”.

“If the morals of our time are already so depraved that we thirst for public sentencing, then we can try public executions too,” wrote another commenter on a Chinese version of Twitter.

But others supported the practice, arguing that convicted criminals had no right to be treated with respect because of the harm they had caused.

Over the past decade, China has attempted to reduce the use of capital punishment, beginning with the requirement in 2007 that all death sentences be reviewed and approved by the Supreme People’s Court. The court has advocated a strategy of “kill fewer, kill cautiously” and reportedly rejected about 10% of death sentences in a single year.

China’s highest court approved the death sentences carried out in Lufeng, according to local media reports.

The government has also reduced the number of offences punishable by death, although China maintains the death penalty for a host of non-violent offences, such as drug trafficking and economic crimes.

“Drug-related offences do not meet the threshold of the ‘most serious crimes’, to which the use of the death penalty must be restricted under international law,” said William Nee, a researcher at Amnesty International. “China should thus immediately end the use of death penalty for drug crimes, which is an abhorrent and bloody stain on China’s human rights record.”

China executes more people than all other countries combined and last year the country carried out about 2,000 death sentences, according to estimates by the Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights organisation based in the United States. That figure is down from roughly 12,000 executions in 2002.