THREE people convicted of violent crimes in northern Changchun
city, Jilin province, were executed as China’s ”strike hard”
campaign rolled into its second year, state press reported on Tuesday.
Fu Guangren (41) was executed in Jilin on Monday after he was
convicted of murdering four people and committing 19 armed
robberies in a three-year period beginning in mid-1999, the Legal
Daily reported.
During that time, Fu allegedly used a sharp wood cutting tool
known as a ”baoben” to murder his victims and became known in Jilin
as the ”baoben” killer, the paper said.
He allegedly stole some 400 000 yuan ($48 000 dollars) in cash
and some 17-million yuan worth of goods, it said.
Also executed in Jilin were Li Yuhai (34) and Xing Tieshan (36)
both convicted of a series of robberies that netted some 194
million yuan, it said.
China began the ”strike hard” campaign in April 2001, which
resulted in at least 1 781 executions from between April and July
2001 and up to 2 468 executions for the entire year, the
London-based rights group Amnesty International said last week.
The number of executions, which was ”more than the total number
of people executed in the rest of the world in the previous three
years,” was tabulated from state press reports and was believed to
be only a part of the total number of executions, Amnesty said.
The number of annual executions in China is a state secret.
In another glimpse into the scope of the ongoing crackdown, the
Legal Daily reported on Tuesday that 859 cases related to the ”strike
hard” campaign had been heard in Wuxi city, in eastern China’s
Jiangsu province alone in the first three months of the year.
Meanwhile, courts in neighbouring Shandong province tried 4 536
”strike hard” cases related to organised and violent crimes in the
same period, with strict punishments expected to be meted out soon,
the paper said.
On March 26, China’s top security official announced the
extension of the campaign for another year despite admitting only
limited success in curbing rampant crime, state press reported.
Luo Gan said crime was still running at high levels and ”the
situation does not lend itself to optimism on the security front”,
Xinhua news agency reported. – AFP
