Police torture, judicial murder in China.

The Chinese have a delicious description of managing to have some necessary contact with bureaucracy and withdrawing safely: Escape from the mouth of the dragon.

Here's a fascinating story about a Chignese man who escaped -- eventually -- notwithstanding determined, multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional efforts to injure him mortally:

General problem:

The police and courts still rely mainly on pretrial confessions and perfunctory court proceedings to resolve criminal cases instead of the Western tradition of analyzing forensic evidence and determining guilt through contentious court trials. China's criminal laws forbid torture and require judges to weigh evidence beyond a suspect's confession. But lawyers and legal scholars say forced confessions remain endemic . . . .

Specifics:

Mr. Kahn, the source of this story, tells of the vicious treatment of an innocent man, Qin Yanhong, in Anyang, Henan Province. China. Next time you want a textbook story of arbitrary, inquisitional government at work, come back to this story.

• Mr. Qin was subjected to the "tiger stool."
• Mr. Qin was subjected to "taking a jet plane."
• Mr. Qin was subjected to "circling the pig."
• Mr. Qin's trial was closed to the public.
• His trial lasted less than one day, no witnesses called by prosecutor.
• Mr. Qin was forbidden to call his own witnesses.
• He was convicted on the basis of his "confession" alone.
• "Oral confessions" are insufficient grounds for conviction (Criminal Procedure Law).
• The Chinese constitution forbids use of torture to obtain confessions.
• In China there is no legal right to have a lawyer present during interrogation.
• This right would have absolutely protected Mr. Qin in this case.
• In China there is no legal right to remain silent.
• Mr. Qin was sentenced to death.
• He spent four years in jail till released only by sheer luck.
• He as paid only $35,000 in compensation ($4.21/hr for his trouble) but on condition he not talk to the media or ask higher authority for more money.

Incredibly, Mr. Shen Jun, the senior detective in charge of Mr. Qin's interrogation was promoted.

Who would have guessed there's such a shortage of trained cops in China that a committed, systematic torturer would have to be kept on and even

Lucky to be alive.

promoted. Someone must have sent out an APB with the word "decency" in it and caused half the cops in China to drop dead from laughing.

Mr. Qin was saved from death only by a retired soldier who went to the police and confessed to 18 murders, one of which was, clearly, the murder for which Mr. Qin had been convicted.

The police and judges who so viciously worked over Mr. Qin, far from immediately freeing him, set out to suppress the new evidence of exoneration and keep him on death row.

Authorities in the two cases involving Mr. Qin and the retired soldier agreed to prosecute the soldier for 17 murders instead of 18 and leave Mr. Qin's conviction intact.

Now that has to be some kind of a Guiness record, even in the annals of Chinese communist rule.

Consensus leader of teeny tiny minority of unelected, privileged claque.

Emphasis here is on the word "communist," which was (along with its sister form of fascism in Germany and Japanese militarism gangster psycho fascism) responsible for just about everything vile in the last century, until, that is, the hatching of Arafat, Khomeini, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other such forms of human lice.

In China's top-down political system, the police, prosecutors and judges respond mostly to incentives from above, [defense lawyer and former prosecutor] Mr. Li [Bin] said. They pay a much higher price for failing to maintain the appearance of social order than for torturing suspects, he said.

"The judicial system is set up to protect the authority of the government," he said. "It is not set up to protect the rights of suspects."

Mr. Qin had no right of appeal. Bottom line: the august legal system of the majestic Marxist-Leninist People's Republic of China boils down to being institutionalized arbitrariness in the hands of (1) predatory local cops and (2) "judges" with zero interest in the search for the truth even when it's a matter involving taking away a man's life.

It turns out that that seemingly innocuous term "the search for truth" is a vital part of the criminal justice system in any country, as well as of science, public policy, personal relations, and inner jihad. Anything that undermines that search, such as slavish devotion to the lies of multiculturalism, blocks off a part of reality from critical inquiry and the cockroaches of superstition, obscurantism, and political correctness will fill the void in the time it takes to say "religion of peace."

The last, excellent word is from Rising Sun:

I'm sorry, but you can take your cultural relativism and shove it. This is not a question of Western values versus Asian values. The actions reported in the above three stories [of which this was one] indicate that China's government, quite simply, does not value human life, dignity, or freedom at all. And no matter how many computers it networks or skyscrapers it builds, China will never truly become a modern nation until it does.

"Rule by Law. Deep Flaws, and Little Justice, in China's Court System." By Joseph Kahn, New York Times, 9/21/05.