China calls for end to public shamings

THE Chinese government has called for an end to the public shaming of criminal suspects in the country, a time-honoured cudgel of Chinese law enforcement.

According to the state-run media, the Ministry of Public Security has ordered the police to stop parading suspects in public and has called on local police departments to enforce laws in a "rational, calm and civilised manner."

The new regulations are thought to be a response to the public outcry over a recent spate of "shame parades," in which those suspected of being prostitutes are shackled and forced to walk in public.

Last October, the police in Henan Province took to the internet, posting photographs of women suspected of being prostitutes. Other cities have taken to publishing the names and addresses of convicted sex workers and those of their clients.

The most widely circulated images, taken earlier this month in the southern city of Dongguan, included young women roped together and paraded barefoot through crowded city streets.

The police later said they were not punishing the women, only seeking their help in the pursuit of an investigation.

The public response, at least on the internet, has tended toward outrage. The anger, much of it directed at the police, comes at a time of growing mistrust of local law enforcement officials.

Although corruption among the police is rife in China, public disdain has been further heightened by a series of widely publicised episodes involving suspects who have mysteriously died while in custody.

The extraction of confessions through beating is another common Chinese police method.

Mao Shoulong, a professor of public policy at People's University in Beijing, said the new regulations were necessary to rein in the worst impulses of the police.

"There are more modern tools for law enforcement," he said. "Besides, if these kinds of tactics are allowed, the police will get used to dealing with problems outside of the law."

The most recent wave of prostitution arrests involving tens of thousands of suspects is part of a seven-month "strike hard" campaign aimed at gambling, drug use and violent crime.

As part of the increased law enforcement efforts, judicial authorities have been encouraged to dish out swifter, and harsher, punishment.

It is the fourth such campaign since 1983.

Public shaming of the accused and the condemned has been a long tradition in China - one that the Communist Party embraced with zeal during its episodes of class struggle and other anti-crime crusades.

Although public executions have been discontinued, provincial cities continue to hold mass sentencing rallies, during which convicts wearing confessional placards are driven though the streets in open trucks.

It is unclear whether the directive against the humiliation of suspects will have the desired effect.

Similar rules and regulations have been passed down through the years, beginning in 1988, when the Supreme People's Court ordered prosecutors and the police to protect the identities of the accused.

In 2007, the country's top judicial and law enforcement bodies issued a similar notice that forbade the parading of convicts.

Even if such directives must be issued repeatedly, Joshua Rosenzweig of the Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights group, said he was encouraged that the government recognised the need to abolish such practices.

"Repetition can increase pressure and help force change, but ultimately it will take a great deal of political will to implement these kinds of changes," he said.