Want China Times, Huang Su-yu and Staff Reporter 2015-03-30
The number of Chinese officials who commit suicide soon after they are placed under investigation for coouption is increasing — greater than the number who are ultimately sentenced to death for graft, reports our Chinese-language sister paper Want Daily.
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| China's former railways minister Liu Zhijun was given the death sentence with reprieve in Beijing on July 8, 2013. (Photo/CNS) |
The number of Chinese officials who commit suicide soon after they are placed under investigation for coouption is increasing — greater than the number who are ultimately sentenced to death for graft, reports our Chinese-language sister paper Want Daily.
Thirty-nine
such officials committed suicide in 2014 compared to seven in 2013, according
to the Financial Times, which was quoted in a January 2015 article by Sound of
Hope (SOH), a Chinese-language news website based in San Francisco.
China's
non-transparent legal system and governmental pressure given on officials
fingered for graft have contributed to the increasingly high suicide rate,
according to the Financial Times.
From August
2003 to April 2014, the Financial Times counted 112 Chinese officials who
committed suicide in 26 provinces. Over 70% of them were department chiefs and
below. Among these officials, over 20% were allegedly involved in corruption
cases.
In the 39
officials who committed suicide in 2014, 10 were either indicted or suspected
of corruption.
Figures
about corrupt officials' suicides have also been concealed by the authorities
because of the potential negative effects on their family members, according to
Financial Times. The official numbers are therefore only a conservative
evaluation, hiding an even larger number of government officials who committed
suicide.
On the
other hand, the number of government officials who were sentenced to death for
corruption had on the opposite decreased. China's criminal law stipulates that
an official who makes illegal gains of up to 5,000 yuan (US$800) would be
sentenced to one year in prison, and their sentence would be increased by a
year for each further 10,000 yuan (US$1,600) they pocketed. Officials who
obtained more than 100,000 yuan (US$16,000) through graft may be subject to a
life sentence. Above that and they could potentially face the death penalty.
SOH
reported however that only a very small number of corrupt officials are
sentenced to death — and the death sentence is often commuted to life imprisonment
after two years. There were only 15 officials sentenced to death between 2000
and 2011. Between 2012 and 2014, only one official was executed for corruption
— Zhang Xinhua, a former general manager for Baiyun Agricultural, Industrial
and Commercial United Company in Guangzhou, who reportedly took 400 million
yuan (US$64.4 million) in bribes.
The
Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily questioned why so many government
officials would commit suicide when placed under a graft probe. Qian Lieyang, a
lawyer for Liu Zhijun, the former railways minister who was given a death
sentence with reprieve in 2013, said he does not think the death sentence is
enough of a deterrent and the suicide cases are proof that corrupt officials
are not afraid of dying, as that might the best choice for them.
Liu, who
oversaw the development of China's high-speed rail network and skimmed mightily
off the top in the process, was sentenced to death with a reprieve on July 8,
2013. Death sentence with reprieve is a criminal punishment only found in
China, whereby death row inmates have their execution suspended for two years
and are only executed if they are found to have intentionally committed further
crimes during that time. The sentence is otherwise automatically reduced to
life imprisonment.
The suicide
of officials fingered for corruption is frustrating to legal investigations due
to the loss of testimony from the subject about their crime and the diminished
chance of catching others who may be implicated.
Members of
the public are often pleased when officials kill themselves, seeing it as a
natural form of justice that the system cannot pervert, reflecting a lack of
trust in the party's discretion to investigate internally before handing
officials over the courts.
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A group of
state-owned enterprise officials under trial in Wenzhou,
Zhejiang province,
December 2011. (File photo/Xinhua)
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