China's Death-mobile Now Out in the Open
September 09, 2009
It has never been a secret that China executes approximately four times as many people as the rest of the world for committing crimes against the state, and it has never been a secret that China has regularly carried out its executions in public by firing squad or by a single bullet to the head. In the past, as well as now, a Chinese prisoner's arms have been typically shackled behind them, and their executioner forces them to kneel down. Afterward the executioner, usually a soldier or police officer, will ask the prisoner to open his mouth so that the bullet will pass through the mouth and leave the prisoner's face intact. The gunman then fires the bullet into the back of the condemned prisoner's head or neck. The criminal's family usually has to pay the state for the bullet used to carry out the execution for any number of capital crimes including murder, drug trafficking, rape, pimping, publishing pornography, graft, reselling value-added tax receipts and so forth, to name only a few of the crimes on China's books that qualify a convicted person for execution. China's statistics regarding its death penalty are a state secret, but it is known that executions are often carried out immediately following sentencing, with the convict taken to a pre-selected location away from the prison where he or she has been held due to the fact that it is considered inhumane to shoot a convict inside the prison because the other prisoners would hear the gunshot.
However, that is all changing now. Like the portable bookmobile of years past in the U.S., or the blood donor buses and/or health screening buses that are sometimes still used here, the Chinese believe they may have improved a bit on the concept of executing its criminals by coming out with the death-mobile, a fancy vehicle that resembles a tour bus but which is used as a mobile execution chamber where convicts are put to death by lethal injection. As they move from town-to-town, the death vehicles in China are considered a more civilized alternative to the firing squad or death by gunshot to the back of the head. China's experts say that death by lethal injection better "promotes human rights" because it ends the life of the condemned more quickly. One can only imagine the feelings of the townsfolk as the death bus rolls into town on any given day to take care of business, cleanly and safely, not to mention clinically. Amnesty International has estimated that there were 1,770 executions in China in 2005 (with some estimates by the same group that there may have been as many as 8,000 executions) as opposed to about 60 in the U.S. Of course, China's population now exceeds 1.25 billion, and the population in the U.S. currently stands at about 307,000,000, giving one cause to wonder how, statistically or proportionately, if you will, our numbers stack up against the numbers in China with regard to percentages—if one could even obtain China's actual numbers. Not being a number-cruncher, we won't even attempt it here.
Although most of China's executions are still carried out by gunshot, the government seems determined to eventually fully implement lethal injection as the standard method, to be carried out in the fancy death vans or buses. Proponents for making the switch or transition say that the death buses save money for the local communities, which are often very poor, because they do not have to pay to have an execution facility constructed. They also say that the buses ensure that the executions are carried out locally—closer to where the crime was committed—and thus act as a deterrent for others not to commit crime.
The death buses function, in some ways, much like an ambulance, but with an obvious difference—instead of trying to save lives, they take them. There is one particular feature that an official at the bus manufacturing plant seems to think its operators like, and that is the automated bed or gurney. Instead having to struggle with the condemned prisoner to get him into the bus, the gurney is automated and slides out of the vehicle mechanically, at an incline, with the push of a button, allowing the condemned prisoner to be more easily strapped to the temporary bed and moved by machine into the bus.
"It's too brutal to haul a person aboard," said an official at the company that manufactures the buses. "This makes it convenient for the criminal and the guards."
Critics of the newly adopted method of execution, however, say it makes it easier for the illegal trade of a prisoner's organs, which have traditionally been removed after death and sent to hospitals needing them. Organs can now be "extracted in a speedier and more effective way than if the prisoner is shot," according to a researcher at Amnesty International in Hong Kong. "We have gathered strong evidence suggesting the involvement of police, courts and hospitals in the organ trade."
Although China's Ministry of Health has banned organ sales and has tightened their standards for approving transplants, some say, including Amnesty International, that the organ trade may be one of the reasons why China has consistently fought doing away with its death penalty.
"Given the high commercial value of organs," said the Amnesty International researcher, "it is doubtful the new regulations will have an effect."
Other critics of China's transition to lethal injection say that a bullet to the brain is cheaper, and that communities do not have to shell out as much as $125 for the drugs used to kill the prisoner. Some say, particularly in the U.S., that execution by lethal injection is a cruel and unusual punishment in which the condemned suffer much pain because they are not given sufficient anesthetic. It is also interesting to note that China uses the same three-drug death "cocktail" as that used in the U.S.—sodium thiopental to render the prisoner unconscious, pancuronium bromide to cause their breathing to stop, and potassium chloride to stop the heart.
China's position, however, is that it does not really matter which method is used to kill the condemned criminal because if someone is convicted of a capital crime, they should face the ultimate penalty. Unlike in the U.S., China does not give its prisoners the right to choose between methods of execution, but there is growing evidence that a person's wealth, or ability to pay off a government official, may play a part in deciding who gets shot or who gets stuck with a needle.
"It is a real phenomenon that gangsters and corrupt officials are killed by injection more than gunshot, so their bodies are (left) intact and death is less painful," said a death penalty researcher at a think tank in Beijing. "But I doubt it is government policy. These criminals are usually held in cities, where the injection is used. Common criminals are held in county-level facilities, where shooting is more common."
In the meantime, death by gunshot remains the primary method of execution in China, and there does not appear to be a timetable in place for the implementation of lethal injection as that country's preferred method of execution. Besides, under the current preferred scheme of things, the condemned prisoner's family pays for the bullet.
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