BEIJING, July 6 (Kyodo) - By: Noah Smith China sentenced 2,960 people to death and executed 1,781 since launching a ''strike-hard'' campaign in April, putting more people to death in three months than the rest of the world combined over the past three years, Amnesty International said in a statement Friday.
The London-based rights group cited public reports in China as the source of its figures, which, though high, account for ''only a fraction'' of actual executions. Actual death penalty statistics are a closely guarded state secret.
The current ''strike-hard'' is the fourth since 1983 but is shaping up to be far more severe and protracted than its predecessors, Amnesty China researcher Katherine Baber told Kyodo.
China began a campaign to crack down on gang activity last December that was expanded this spring to target all manner of crime, pushing law enforcers to step up arrest figures and hurry through prosecutions.
In recent months suspects have been executed for such crimes as bribery, pimping, embezzlement, tax fraud, stealing gasoline and peddling narcotics, Amnesty said. Chinese law prescribes the death penalty for 70 crimes, in cases deemed ''most heinous.''
The three-month tally of death sentences and executions already nearly matches the yearly average for the 1990s, when Amnesty recorded 27,599 sentences and 18,194 executions for the decade.
Although there are guidelines in place intended to preserve the death penalty for ''iron-clad'' cases approved by China's Supreme People's Court, implementation is far from consistent and is routinely hurried along for political expediency.
Provincial governments set their own criteria for using the death penalty.
Authorities in China's western Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region aim to ''deal a decisive blow to separatist forces, eliminating separatism and illegal religious activities,'' Amnesty said, quoting local sources. ''Many Uighur political prisoners have been executed, accused of 'separatism' and a range of alleged violent crimes,'' the statement said.
Authorities in Tibet are targeting those who ''guide people illegally across borders,'' Amnesty quoted sources as saying, referring to Tibetans who migrate between the home of the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in northern India and Tibet.
Law enforcement officials throughout the country are ''reporting with pride'' the huge number of arrests and prosecutions they have gotten through since the campaign began, Baber said.
With police and courts under pressure to produce impressive statistics, China's already patchily enforced criminal procedure law is trampled all the more readily.
''Curtailed procedures plus great pressure on police and judicial authorities mean that the potential for miscarriages of justice, arbitrary sentencing and the execution of innocent people is immense,'' the statement said.
''There are periods of education and insistence on the rule of law and proper procedure, but then along comes a 'strike-hard' and that seems to count for very little.'' Baber said.
Cases of wrongful imprisonment during previous ''strike-hard'' campaigns continue to be brought to light. Amnesty counted more than 20 cases in the past year of overturned sentences, often originally based on confessions ''obtained through torture.''
The ''strike-hard'' is partly in response to China's ballooning crime rate, Baber said. ''The stated objective is to achieve a marked improvement in public order.''
AP-NY-07-06-01 0617EDT
Copyright 2001 The Kyodo News Service.