China Executes Chief Justice

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China executed on Wednesday former Chief Justice of Chongqing, Wen Qiang.

Wen Qiang was sentenced to death in April this year for protecting gangs, bribery, rape and "property scamming", according to state media, People's Daily.

Chongqing courts have sentenced dozens of people to death or long jail terms over the past several months as part of the crackdown in the sprawling city of more than 30 million.

The campaign was marked by graphic tales of murder and extortion committed by cops-turned-robbers, as citizens besieged government offices waving bloody photos and swords allegedly used by the gangs.

The trials were initially popular with the media and the public, who are fed up with police corruption and crime, but the rush to judgment has concerned some in the Chinese legal community.

Some citizens in Chongqing told Reuters last week that the campaign has gone a little too far, ensnaring small players with excessive punishment.

The deep ties between police and organised crime hark back to China's tumultuous years before the Communist Party won power in 1949, when local warlords and rich businessmen had close connections with the criminal underworld.

Related Article

CHINA: Judges and Police in Chongqing Municipality Have to Reveal Assets ( 4 Dec 2009)

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As part of a pilot initiative to curb corruption among law-keepers, Chongqing municipality's Party committee will direct all senior judges, prosecutors and police officers to reveal their assets. The Chongqing Municipality has 30 million residents.

The move follows the detention of more than 200 government officials, including judges, prosecutors and police, on charges of accepting bribes from organized gangs to protect them.

According to the local procuratorate, 19 top departmental officials, such as governors of districts, have been implicated for protecting criminal gangs from January to September this year.

In addition, more than 200 officials from public security bureaus, courts and procuratorates, who failed to crack down on gangs and protected them instead, have been detained since June.

The accused include:

1. former director of Chongqing Justice Bureau, Wen Qiang, 56;
   
   
2. former deputy director of the municipal public security bureau, Peng Changjian, 46;
   
   
3. deputy chief justice of the Chongqing Higher People's Court, Zhang Tao; and
   
   
4. ex-director of the enforcement bureau of the municipal higher people's court, Wu Xiaoqing, 57, who committed suicide in a local detention house last weekend.Wu had allegedly received bribes amounting to 3.5 million yuan ($512,700) and HK$100,000 ($12,900) between 1998 and 2008. He was also unable to explain where he had obtained another 5.18 million yuan, a spokesman for the local government said.
   

Liu Xinyong, former deputy Party Secretary of Chongqing's Fengdu county, and another three local officials were also accused of accepting bribes worth more than 10 million yuan each.

Chongqing citizens are in favor of the government's initiative to uproot corruption from officialdom, but also skeptical about the solution.