China’s New System to Address Miscarriages of Justice

Posted by on Nov 18, 2014 in Blog | 0 comments

So-called ‘human rights’ groups habitually chastise China for the absence of the rule of law and a plethora of social injustices, especially those resulting from local farmers/residents confronting greedy developers/industrialists and corrupt officials over land grabs and pollution.  China is introducing a system to investigate and help correct miscarriages of justice.  Chinese judicial reform has been on-going for decades and gathering momentum.

Harsh critics of China should ask themselves how long it took for countries like the US to bring in substantive judicial reforms that rectified the courts in notoriously gangster-dominated cities like Chicago before WWII.  This is not even to talk about the miscarriages of justice during the civil rights and Vietnam War eras.   And in the vicinity, what of the countless injustices that were perpetrated throughout the high growth periods in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea?

So, critics should get off their high horses and recognize progress in Chinese judicial reform which is often a gradual and incremental process.

 

China’s government will implement a system of investigating miscarriages of justice, the country’s top judge said, in the latest in a series of legal reforms at a time of widening public discontent.

An investigation should “start immediately” once a miscarriage of justice has been identified, Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People’s Court, wrote in the latest issue of Qiushi.

“On the widespread concern shown by society over miscarriages of justice, (we) must give information to the public in a timely manner and respond to society’s concerns,” Zhou wrote in the lead essay of the influential journal.

At a key meeting in October, the CPC made “governing the country by law” the focus of its agenda for the first time. It pledged to speed up legislation to fight corruption and make it tougher for officials to exert control over the judiciary.

The measures reflect worries about rising social unrest.  Anger over land grabs, corruption and pollution – issues often left unresolved by the courts – have resulted in violence between police and residents in recent years.

– Reuters