Peter Wilson

60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.  That is a cause for celebration everywhere, and there is widespread acceptance that these are universal values, not the values of one country or region.

In China there has been  impressive  progress on economic and social rights in the last thirty years.  Premier Wen and the Prime Minister reconfirmed their commitment to the Millennium Development Goals in New York this September, and China's progress on poverty reduction is remarkable.  But this progress is is not yet matched on political rights.   

We value the dialogue we have with the Chinese government on these issues, bilaterally and through the EU, and will continue to look for opportunities to work together on projects where we can make a difference. The debate about progress on human rights need not be a confrontational one between governments.   And greater transparency in particular usually leads to greater understanding.  In China, experiment and pilots are common.  There are quite a few in this field: when they work they  are often replicated by others, and sometimes on a national scale.

Our big hope is that China will ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that it signed several years ago.  The ICCPR protects individual freedoms, including freedom of expression and freedom of belief.  These sorts of protections can strengthen rather than undermine social stablity.  

I've blogged before about death penalty reform.  There has been some movement in China, although more transparency would be welcome, and the EU continues to oppose the use of the death penalty, in particular for non-violent crimes (the ICCPR also calls for the death penalty to be limited to 'the most serious crimes').  There has been significant movement on this globally - very few countries now actually apply the death penalty, and the number is falling all the time.  Many leading judicial officials think this day will come in China - but not for some time.

Posted at 12:15 10 December 2008 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[1]

Death penalty in China

I went to a seminar on the death penalty this morning, that senior Chinese judges and lawyers have organised with the Great Britain China Centre and international experts, and which we and the European Commission are co-sponsoring. Because of the EU's opposition to the death penalty, the Commission and Member States support activity like this in those countries where the death penalty is still used. In practice that number, thankfully, is getting smaller all the time - though China is not alone, and this of course is a legitimate, serious global debate.

The debate inside China on the death penalty is a reasonably open one. But it is hard to get a handle on, because the figures for executions are not public. Estimates for the overall figure vary, but there is a general consensus that the number of executions in China has at least halved since the 1990s. Important reforms were introduced at the beginning of 2007, that the Supreme People's Court must review each sentence when lower courts seek to have it immediately applied. (Some death sentences are suspended for two years: in practice if the prisoner behaves well, my understanding is that these cases are usually commuted to life.) The result has been that an estimated 15% of cases have gone back to the High Courts. Courts are also more likely to think twice before passing a death sentence, now that they are automatically referred to the Supreme People's Court.

Several senior Chinese experts reiterated the publicly stated long term aim to abolish the death penalty. One talked about China's signing of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR): China would need to seriously restrict the application of the death penalty, and ideally consider abolition, in order to ratify the Convention, which, having signed, it clearly wanted to do. As part of the long term project of which this seminar was a part, research has been done into public opinion on the death penalty in China. Although 60% say they are in favour, a large number don't know what they think, and when asked about applying this penalty in particular cases, about 80% oppose it, except in cases of murder. The list of cases to which the death penalty still technically applies in China is a long one, although the scope is narrowing.

There are strong practical reasons for opposing the death penalty. In most cases, the real deterrent for a crime is the likelihood of getting caught more than the severity of the punishment. When the death penalty is applied, subsequent discovery of the wrongful conviction is irreversible. And it is hard to use the ultimate penalty as a deterrent when it is not clear to how many individuals it has actually been applied.

Our disagreement on this subject is not just with China - it is, very publicly, with some other countries too. These days, experts can meet, and talk about what all do agree is a common aim - abolition. The seminar continues today.

Posted at 13:22 31 October 2008 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[3]