United Nations
Report: Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, E/CN.4/1995/61 (excerpt) [p.66]
Economic and Social Council
14 December 1994
COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Fifty-first session
Item 12 of the provisional agenda
QUESTION OF THE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS, IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO COLONIAL AND OTHER DEPENDENT COUNTRIES AND TERRITORIES
Extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
Report by the Special Rapporteur, Mr. Bacre Waly Ndiaye, submitted pursuant to Commission on Human Rights resolution 1994/82
China
Information received and communications sent
94. As in former years, the Special Rapporteur received reports and allegations referring to the extensive use of the death penalty, imposed after proceedings which were said to fall short of internationally recognized fair trial standards. One source recorded at least 2,564 death sentences during 1993. In at least 1,419 of these cases the death sentence was said to have been carried out. The highest number of capital sentences was registered during the month of September 1993: at least 570 people were reported to have been sentenced to death and more than 373 executed. According to the information received, this may have been due partly to an anti-corruption campaign launched by the authorities on a nation-wide basis during the second half of August. The concerns expressed by several observers remain the same as in the past: inter alia, the wide scope of capital offences and increase in the number of crimes punishable by death under recent legislation, the possibility of imposing death sentences on persons between 16 and 18 years of age, restrictions in the right to an adequate defence and the right to appeal. Reference is made to a more detailed description of these allegations in the Special Rapporteur's report to the Commission on Human Rights at its fiftieth session (E/CN.4/1994/7, paras. 209-215).
95. (...)The Special Rapporteur also transmitted to the authorities the case of Phuntsong Yangki, who was said to have died on 4 February 1994 at the police hospital in Lhasa, allegedly after having been denied proper medical treatment at Drapchi prison. At the time the present report was finalized, no reply had been received from the Government.