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Extended Detention, Forced Confession Still Salient in Chinese Judiciary: Report
Three years after the new Criminal Procedure Law was implemented, over-extended detention of criminal suspects and forced confession is still a "salient problem" in many parts of China, a senior legislator said Wednesday, December 27.
Hou Zongbin, chairman of the Committee for Internal and Judicial Affairs under the National People's Congress, made the comment when reporting on how the law was implemented in six selected provinces, autonomous regions and cities to the NPC Standing Committee.
The new Criminal Procedure Law, which brought landmark reforms to the criminal justice system in China by introducing the principle of presumption of innocence and entitling more rights to lawyers so as to curb power abuse by judiciaries, was adopted by the NPC in March 1996, and took effect as of October 1997.
"In the main, Chinese judiciaries, including judges, prosecutors and police, have noticeably upgraded their performance of duties, but we cannot simply afford to neglect the problems of extended detention and forced confession that exist in many places," Hou told the meeting.
"While a number of those already under extended custody before the new law was enforced have not been released, new instances of the same kind are occurring," he said.
Some places have seen a drop in the number of forced confessions, but such illegal practices have not been wiped out, and the problem is rather serious in certain places, causing terrible social consequences, the lawmaker added.
It has also been discovered that judges, prosecutors and police in quite a few places are illegally restricting the activities of attorneys hired by criminal defendants.
"They have difficulties in meeting their clients, accessing court files relating to their cases and their reasonable petitions have more often than not been rejected," he said.
The fundamental reason for such illegal deeds by law enforcers lies in their "erroneous understanding" of the new law, who, including many leading officers, regard that the law is "too advanced" for China, said Hou.
"More efforts must be made to educate law enforcers on this new law, while the judicial system should be further improved to intensify supervision and checks on their performance of duties," he proposed.
The NPC Standing Committee sent six teams to Tianjin, Inner Mongolia, Helongjiang, Zhejiang, Shaanxi and Hubei in September to check how the Criminal Procedure Law has been implemented.
Standing Committees of provincial-level people's congresses in six other provinces and regions did the inspection at the same time under authorization of the NPC Standing Committee.
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