Re-education through labor, however, runs contrary to those amendments as many cases have shown that it has been misused to persecute innocent people and illegally punish protestors.
Last August, for example, a woman named Tang Hui in central China's Hunan Province was sentenced to 18 months in a labor camp after demanding tougher penalties for the seven men convicted of abducting, raping and prostituting her 11-year-old daughter. She was released within a week following complaints from academics, state media and the public.
Expectations are high for reform and the nation's new leadership must now gets real about this issue. The problem, however, is how to prevent abuses of power as some officials are obsessed with rule by man, which was practiced in China for thousands of years and runs contrary to the rule of law.
A recent example is the Bo Xilai case, which has led the public to question whether individual officials can be restrained by the law when they become too powerful.
Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping has called for a fight against injustice and corruption to ensure "justice in each judicial case." This requires wisdom and courage among those in charge of making and enforcing law, and whether they can make it remains to be seen.
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