09 March 2022 :
China’s chief justice has called for the death penalty for serious offences involving “cruel treatment” of women, children and the elderly, in an apparent response to public fury over recently exposed human trafficking cases.
Delivering the annual work report of the Supreme People’s Court on 8 March 2022, Zhou Qiang said the death penalty would be “consistently implemented against offences that seriously violate public safety and security”.
“Crimes that challenge the legal and moral bottom line – including cruel treatment against women, children and the elderly – and that warrant the death penalty according to the law, shall receive the death sentence,” Zhou told the annual legislative meeting in Beijing.
China’s top prosecutor, Zhang Jun, also pledged to do more to bring human traffickers to justice as he delivered the work report of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.
“[We will] work with relevant departments and consolidate efforts to prosecute and seek severe punishment for trafficking, not rescuing or obstructing efforts to rescue trafficked women and children,” Zhang told lawmakers.
It comes amid outrage in China over human trafficking, sparked in January by a viral video of a woman found chained by the neck in a hut in Xuzhou, in the eastern province of Jiangsu. It was later revealed that the woman had been sold as a bride and had given birth to eight children.
Her plight has prompted heated debate over child marriage and women’s rights in China. Other alleged trafficking cases have since come to light, including a woman who had apparently been caged in the northwestern province of Shaanxi.
Public pressure over such cases prompted the Ministry of Public Security last week to announce a year-long campaign to stem the trafficking of women and children.
There have also been calls for tougher penalties for buyers in human trafficking cases.
Penalties for trafficking women and children range from five years in jail to life imprisonment or death. But unlike trafficking of illegal plants or animals – where buyers and sellers face the same punishment – the penalties are much more lenient for those who buy trafficked women and children than for those who sell. The maximum jail term for buying a trafficked woman or child is three years.
On 8 March, the chief justice also said criminal offences involving sexual assault, trafficking and buying trafficked women and children would be “severely punished”.
“Judicial protection for trafficked women and children will also be strengthened,” according to the top court’s work report.
It said more than 3,300 personal safety protection orders had been issued for domestic violence victims last year.
The top court also plans to crack down on juvenile crime, as well as parents who fail to protect their children – including by arranging marriages for their infants.
“Parents will lose custody for child abuse, and ‘childcare according to the law’ will become an obligation for parents,” the work report said.
Those who fail in their duties on education will be issued with a family education order.
China’s new Family Education Promotion Law, aimed at improving protection for children, took effect from January 1. It includes a requirement for parents and guardians not to overload children with homework and extra lessons.
Separately, the top legislature on 8 March said it would revise the Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests this year, the second amendment since it was passed in 1992.
The National People’s Congress said the changes aimed to give more protection to women and to eliminate all forms of discrimination against them, and it was expected to go through two more readings.
The proposed amendments cover gender equality in education and employment as well as the inheritance of rural land. There is also a proposal to outlaw the use of superstitious and “mind control” tactics on women, and to allow women to seek compensation for household duties such as childcare when they divorce.
