Seeking Happiness for People: 70 Years of Progress on Human Rights in China
China Daily | Updated: 2019-09-23 07:38
Improving judicial openness. To increase judicial transparency, China has improved the platforms for releasing information on judicial process, trials, written judgments, and the execution of judgments, and the platform on disclosing information on cases handled by people's procuratorates. As of February 2019, China Judicial Process Information Online had disclosed information on 370 million cases, the National Court Hearing Online had broadcast 2.59 million court trials, and China Judgements Online had disclosed 63.82 million copies of judgments, attracting a total of 2.26 billion visits. Since its launch on October 1, 2014, the online information disclosure service of the procuratorates has disclosed information on the proceedings of 9.28 million cases and 580,000 items of information on major cases, put online 3.86 million legal documents, and booked 300,000 defense and litigation applications online. China has strengthened supervision over judicial activities, criminal proceedings, and civil administrative proceedings, and improved the system of people's jurors and supervisors.
Guaranteeing the right to fair trial for all parties. China has promoted the reform of the criminal litigation system with a focus on adjudication, strictly enforced the principles of "no penalty without a law", evidence-based verdict, and exclusionary rule, improved the mechanism for witnesses to appear in court, and strengthened the role of court trials. China has fully guaranteed the right to defense of criminal suspects and defendants. A criminal suspect has the right to entrust a defender from the date when organs of investigation conduct the first interrogation or a compulsory measure is taken against the suspect. A defendant has the right to authorize a defender at any time. Pilot work has been launched to ensure duty counsels offer legal aid for all cases and legal defense is provided in all criminal cases, and legal aid stations can be found at all courts and detention houses, to ensure that defendants in all criminal cases can obtain legal defense and support in trial. The state protects defense lawyers' rights to meet their clients, to read case files, to investigate and obtain evidence, to conduct cross-examination, and to debate and defend, and other litigious rights. It has improved the mechanism for lawyers to perform their duties by law, formed a joint response system to ensure lawyers' right of practice, and established a platform to provide appropriate services to them. China implements the principle of presumption of innocence to prevent and correct miscarriages of justice. From 2013 to March 2019, people's courts at all levels acquitted 5,876 defendants, ensuring that no one should be prosecuted without criminal evidence. Wrongful verdicts on 8,568 criminal cases were overturned, including 49 major cases concerning Hugjiltu for rape and murder, Nie Shubin for rape and murder, and Zhou Jikun, Zhou Jiahua, Zhou Zaichun, Zhou Zhengguo and Zhou Zaihua for murder. The wrongly-convicted all received state compensation in accordance with the law. China has strictly controlled the death penalty, reducing the number of crimes for capital punishment by a significant margin. In 2007, the Supreme People's Court took back the right to review all capital sentences
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