China executes Briton despite UK, family pleas Well apparently the British didnt tried hard enough. Contrary to what would happen to a young white british woman. Is executing people for selling drugs wrong? Is putting them in prison for 20 or more years out of proportion? To be frank the "War on Drugs" cant be won, so is impossible to win the "War on Terror" or the "War on Violence" or the "War on Poverty", etc but that doesnt mean we cannot do our best. What is important is that, despite the fact China IS a police state, the authorities applied the law equally. The punishment wasnt more lenient or more severe just because the convict has a pale skin or is black, brown or muslim, male or female, christian or whatnot. It didnt matter if one is a foreigner who came from a more "civilized" society. Nobody'd take such risks without doing some research first. And Mr. Akmal Shaikh probably knew drugs smuggling is punishable by Death yet he did it anyway. In other words he renounced his rights to life. If there is one civilization that understands the true consequences of stupefacients this civilization is the Chinese civilization. I believe it destroyed more lives than any war we experienced. Some chinese historians even calls it the Chinese Holocaust. To be CLEAR You don't play around with drugs in China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, etc. They don't play that. Zero tolerance. PERIOD. That's their country, and that's their law. And all of the countries in the Far East have FAR less problems with drugs than WE do. If it works for them, that's their prerogative. As for those americans who complains about the number of excecutions held by the chinese govt they are simply forgetting the general SCALE of things. Imagine if the US had a population of 1.3 billion and had to deal with the SAME percentage of crime rates and executions. As a matter of fact the US is worse off than India in terms of executions, nominal wise and percentage wise. You multiply their records by 3 o 4 times and the US would be the country with most incarcelated individuals and capital punishment applications. The US WOULD turn to a racially, arbitrary and partially judicial system where the "suspicious classes" (anyone not white and rich) are more vulnerable to the punitive system. Btw. I am AGAINST capital punishment, but whats worse than that is when this punishment is applied unequally. China executes Briton despite UK, family pleas AP * Buzz up!1383 votes * Send o Email o IM * Share o Delicious o Digg o Facebook o Fark o Newsvine o Reddit o StumbleUpon o Technorati o Twitter o Yahoo! Bookmarks * Print FILE - This undated handout photo taken in Warsaw, Poland and issued by Reprieve AP – FILE - This undated handout photo taken in Warsaw, Poland and issued by Reprieve on Monday Dec. 28, 2009 … By NG HAN GUAN, Associated Press Writer Ng Han Guan, Associated Press Writer – Tue Dec 29, 1:48 pm ET URUMQI, China – China brushed aside international appeals Tuesday and executed by lethal injection a British drug smuggler who relatives say was mentally unstable and unwittingly lured into crime. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "appalled" at the execution of 53-year old Akmal Shaikh — China's first of a European citizen in nearly 60 years. His government summoned the Chinese ambassador in London to express its anger. China defended its handling of the case, saying there had not been documentary proof Shaikh was mentally ill. Beijing also criticized Brown's comments, but said it hoped the case would not harm bilateral relations. The Foreign Ministry called on London not to create any "obstacles" to better ties. Shaikh's daughter Leilla Horsnell was quoted by the BBC and other British media outlets as saying she was "shocked and disappointed that the execution went ahead with no regards to my dad's mental health problems, and I struggle to understand how this is justice." The execution is the latest sign of how China's communist government, with its rising global economic and political clout, is increasingly willing to defy Western complaints over its justice system and human rights record. Last week, a court sentenced the co-author of a political reform manifesto to 11 years in prison in what rights groups called a direct rebuff to international pressure. Diplomats from more than a dozen countries were shut out of Liu Xiaobo's trial on subversion charges. The United States called for his immediate release. Earlier in the month, China urged Cambodia to interrupt a U.N. refugee screening process and subsequently Phnom Penh repatriated 20 ethnic Uighur asylum seekers accused of involvement in ethnic unrest in western China. Shaikh, a Briton of Pakistani descent, was arrested in 2007 for carrying a suitcase with almost 9 pounds (4 kilograms) of heroin into China on a flight from Tajikistan. He told Chinese officials he didn't know about the drugs and that the suitcase wasn't his, according to Reprieve, a London-based prisoner advocacy group that is helping with his case. He was convicted in 2008 after a half-hour trial. He first learned he was about to be executed Monday from his visiting cousins, who made a last-minute plea for his life. They say he is mentally unstable and was lured to China from a life on the street in Poland by men playing on his dreams to record a pop song for world peace. The press office of the Xinjiang region where Shaikh had been held confirmed the execution in a statement handed to journalists. In his statement issued by the Foreign Office, Brown said he condemned the execution "in the strongest terms, and am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted." "I am particularly concerned that no mental health assessment was undertaken," Brown said. The Foreign Office said Foreign Minister Ivan Lewis on Tuesday had reiterated to China's ambassador, Fu Ying, statements by Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband condemning Shaikh's execution. Brown had spoken personally to China's prime minister about the case. Miliband had earlier condemned the execution and said there were unanswered questions about the trial — including over whether there was adequate interpretation during the trial. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu responded that drug smuggling was a serious crime. "We express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British accusation," Jiang told a regularly scheduled news conference in Beijing. The official Xinhua News Agency quoted China's Supreme Court as saying Tuesday that although officials from the British Embassy and a British aid organization called for a mental health examination for Shaikh, "the documents they provided could not prove he had a mental disorder nor did members of his family have a history of mental disease." "There is no reason to cast doubt on Akmal Shaikh's mental status," the Supreme Court was quoted as saying. Xinhua said Shaikh was put to death by lethal injection. China, which executes more people than any other country, is increasingly doing so by lethal injection, although some death sentences are still carried out by a shot in the head. The Beijing-based lawyer for Shaikh's death sentence review, Zhang Qingsong, said Tuesday he never got to meet with Shaikh despite asking the judge and the detention center for access. He said China's highest court never evaluated Shaikh's mental status. According to Reprieve, the last European executed in China was Antonio Riva, an Italian pilot who was shot by a firing squad in 1951 after being convicted of involvement in what China said was a plot to assassinate Mao Zedong and other high-ranking communist officials. "The death of Akmal Shaikh is a sad indictment of today's world, and particularly of China's legal system. ... We at Reprieve are sickened by what we have seen during our work on this case," said Sally Rowen, legal director of Reprieve's death penalty team. Reprieve issued a statement from Shaikh's family members saying they expressed "their grief at the Chinese decision to refuse mercy." The statement thanked supporters, including those who attended a vigil for Shaikh outside the Chinese Embassy in London on Monday night, along with members of a Facebook group that drew 5,000 members in just a few days. The statement asked the media and public to respect the family's privacy as they "come to terms with what has happened to someone they loved." Gareth Saunders, a British teacher who knew Shaikh in Warsaw, said his friend was cheerful but obviously very mentally ill. He said the last time they met in an underpass, Shaikh said he was traveling to Central Asia but would return in two weeks. "I tried to contact after two weeks, no reply. that was the last time I tried to contact him," Saunders told The Associated Press.
I wish I was bipolar... I can go on a crime spree in UK and get away scotch free! hehe Here's a song Akmal Shaikh recorded called "Come Little Rabbit" [video=youtube;0wRGA5v9AQg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wRGA5v9AQg"[/video] Hearing that makes me think of him as a sweet, innocent man-child like Lennie Small from Of Mice and Men. :tear::tear:-cry2-cry2
This guy broke the Chinese law; he deserved whatever punishment the Chinese government imposed on him.
There's a price for everything we do. I do condemn the death penalty, but at the same time I applaud it. Examples do need to be shown, if we just keep locking people up for horrendous crimes, then everyone is not going to take the law seriously. I noticed half way through the article it mentioned something along the lines of I am assuming that this article is written by BBC, so sure they will be comparing Eastern standards with the West. Its understandable, but also note that China has an image to uphold, its own image, and its not an image that is created to please the West, it is an image that only Chinese people will understand. So of course they will continue to be as harsh as they already are, because that's what it has always been like for years.
True, had he broke Chinese law. Whether he did or not, only officially took a half hour by a group of Chinese judges to determine. Further, do people really know about who these judges are? I'm not going to belabor the point, but those who are really interested in the state of jurisprudence within the PRC, should research how someone is named to be a judge, and what academic qualifications are required, and what constitutes the trial process. The results that you find will be frightening. Many of these "judges" have absolutely no legal training, the majority don't even have any sort of degree (much less one in law) and the bulk of them pass rulings on the cases presented to them in accordance with CCP expectations; that is, they rubber stamp the party's determination as to whether someone is innocent or guilty. This is essentially what is meant when Chinese scholars discuss the PRC's legal system as a rule by law (the law is used by a select few to control the masses, they themselves are never subject to it) rather than a rule of law (the law is used equally for all). The problem is, absent a reliable legal infrastructure, there is no real way in comparison to that other nations. One cannot assume that a "fair trail" within the PRC means the same as the accepted process in other nations. Thus, whether he really broke Chinese law or not is debatable, even as it is immaterial, and here's why; if one really looks upon the statement made by the Chinese spokeswoman, it really didn't have anything to do with the man's guilt, innocence, or frankly, the smuggling of drugs. The statements made by the Chinese (from Yahoo): Notice what wasn't said; litigation rights and legal rights are separate and distinct from one another; they are not interchangeable and I suspect that the PRC is fully aware of this. The problem here is that this viewpoint can thus affect the entirety of all Chinese living in China. The point made here is, that the Brits just wanted to free one delusional man back into their care, while the Chinese problem isn't so much the drugs, but the road towards ensuring fair and legal trials for all Chinese litigants; and THAT it is NOT willing to do. The Brit got the same that any Chinese in China can expect from their legal system. I know that many of the respondents here could care less about one nutty Brit, but how about the tens of thousands of Chinese condemned to death, and executed each year from this system? This trial and execution wasn't about one Briton (and whether he was smuggling drugs), but about what the PRC is not willing to give to the Chinese people; a real right to a fair trail. So are you applauding that? Jeez man, they're killing a lot more Chinese than Brits with this system, and the Chinese government was able to con the Chinese into thinking that this was a national sovereignty issue; defending their honor against the white man? LOL... I can't believe how people can be so gullible. Lest anyone thinks that this is an issue of westerner trying to be above the law, the issue of white men or woman (North American, European, Australian, etc) being incarcerated for drug offenses in other countries is not rare. Frankly, it has been going on so much that they actually made a movie called Midnight Express back in 1978. Nowadays, plenty of anglos grace the lock ups of Thailand, Brazil, Malaysia, Turkey, Mexico... so the idea isn't all that novel. If you do the crime, you do the time, and sometimes that means death. People can accept that. What is hard to swallow is the pretense of a fair trial.
Are you trying to say a fair trial in America would be the same as that of Britain? Of course it won't. Every country's law system is different. China is no exception The Brits are just mad because one of their citizens got executed by a foreign country. This is just common human nature, protecting their own kind. Ain't like you're gonna be seeing the Brits arguing over a Mexican killed in China and vice versa.
