【英语中国】中国拟减少死刑罪名

Tomb raiders, the elderly and tax fraudsters may be exempt from execution in China if lawmakers approve a pending amendment to the criminal law, according to an article on Chinanews.com.

China took a small step away from capital punishment Monday when it said it would consider abolishing executions for 13 nonviolent crimes and people over 75 years old. Currently, 68 crimes carry the death penalty.

The 13 crimes under consideration include economic crimes such as tax-rebate fraud, counterfeiting bonds and forging letters of credit.

The amendment would also eliminate capital punishment for those caught smuggling endangered species, stealing objects from ancient tombs or illegally excavating human and animal fossils.

This would be the first time China is considering reducing the number of capital crimes since it enacted the criminal law in 1979. However, the move may be more symbolic than substantive: China Daily quoted a Beijing lawyer who said executions are rarely used for these crimes anyway.

China doesn't make its execution numbers public. But Amnesty International says the number for 2009 was probably in the thousands, more than the rest of the world combined, and ahead of runners up Iran (more than 388), Iraq (more than 120), Saudi Arabia (more than 69) and the U.S. (52).

Symbolic or not, China has recently made an effort to tighten up on executions.

China's Supreme People's Court said that in 2007, the first year in which it took back review of the death penalty from lower-level courts, the number of death sentences was down 30% from the year before.

The court also announced in 2008 that it would replace executions by shooting with lethal injection, which is considered more humane, in more cases.

China has come under fire for executing a U.K. man convicted of drug smuggling last December. That was its first execution of a foreign national in more than 50 years.

国新闻网(Chinanews.com)一篇报道称，如果中国立法者通过一条待决刑法修正案，则盗墓者、老年罪犯及骗税者或可免除死刑。

该报道周一称，中国将考虑取消适用13种非暴力犯罪的死刑，以及对年龄超过75岁的罪犯不执行死刑，这表明中国在死刑处罚方面又放宽了一步。目前，中国共有68种犯罪可判死刑。

拟取消的13个死刑罪名包括退税诈骗、票据造假及伪造信用证等经济性犯罪。

该修正案还欲取消走私珍贵物种、盗窃古墓或非法挖掘人类及动物化石等犯罪的死刑罪名。

这可能是中国自1979年实施刑法以来，第一次考虑减少死刑罪名。然而这一举动的象征意义可能大于实际意义，中国日报(China Daily)援引北京一位律师的话说，这几类犯罪很少有判死刑的案例。

中国一般不将死刑判决的数量公之于众。然而，国际特赦组织(Amnesty International)表示，中国2009年的死刑判决很可能达到数千例，高于世界其它国家和地区的总和，也远远高于排在其后的伊朗(超过388)、伊拉克(超过120)、沙特阿拉伯(超过69)及美国(52)。

无论是否有实际意义，中国最近已做出了放宽死刑的努力。

中国最高人民法院说，2007年最高院首次从下级法院收回死刑复核权，该年的死刑数量较之2006年下降了30%。

最高院还于2008年宣布称，将由注射死刑替代枪决，这在很多情况下被认为是更人道的一种做法。

中国去年12月因将一名犯有毒品走私罪的英国男性处以死刑而受到谴责。这是50多年来中国首次对外籍人士执行死刑。