Chinese Prisoners Allowed to Look Pretty Before They’re Killed?
At first, I thought these pictures were part of some form of satirical protest, and failing that, I thought that they were fake. But a quick search reveals that the habit of taking videos and photos of prisoners about to be executed is routine in China (albeit not their release on the internet), and I’ve yet to see any news reports questioning the authenticity of these ones…so it appears that the Chinese government did indeed recently allow 10 female prisoners to dress nicely and wear cosmetics and jewelry before they were executed (9 by firing squad, the one on the left above by electrocution), after which photos of their final moments were accidentally(?) released on the Chinese portal site Mop.
While the photos are making waves in the Korean blogosphere though, unfortunately as I type this on Saturday night I’ve yet to find any Korean-language reports more substantial than this very basic one from Yahoo! Korea – so vacuous as to not be worth posting my translation here – and nothing at all in English. So, I’ll keep looking in the morning (it’s midnight here), but I’d be grateful if night owls here and/or interested readers in other time zones could pass on anything they find in the meantime, either in Korean or English.
For now, see here for many more pictures, and yes, I’ve yet to see any equivalents of male prisoners in suits.
Update: Still no more information, but according to this short news report at least, the consensus of netizens and experts is that the pictures are fake, and were released for PR purposes.
I didn’t know China eletrocuted people. What was her crime.
I wasn’t aware they did electrocution either. They most commonly use firing squad, and used to charge the relatives of the deceased for the cost of the bullet. It’s hard to be sure how real those photo’s are, as security around such sensitive issues in China would be so strong no journalist would ever be allowed to photograph such clear, accurate shots, and I can’t see why the government would need to either. Although, having lived in China, I can confirm that it is a pretty messed up place in many ways and it is possible that these are real shots!
With the gender imbalance, they probably shouldn’t be executing their females. It’s pretty odd that they are all rather attractive criminals though.
Thanks guys.
That original, albeit unreliable Yahoo! Korea report I linked to did say that Chinese netizens were speculating that the government wanted to show a more merciful side, and I also think that some of the older, not particularly glamorous photos shown are real…but on the other hand the ones featuring the woman in the electric chair certainly did seem very artificial looking, and that’s the first time I’ve ever heard of an electric chair being used in China also, which would be particularly strange given the well-known practice of organ harvesting of executed prisoners, and even of their skin too, many articles about which came up when I tried to find out more of these photos on Google.
I asked my girlfriend (who is Chinese) about this and she said it is common to allow people. especially women, to look and dress the way they want before being executed. She said it was partly for the same reason we afford the condemned a “last meal” of their own request in Western countries (a last act of compassion for those who are about to die), and partly for their families, who are given these photos.
Hmmm…I guess the jury’s still out then!
Not that I disbelieve her at all, but to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment though, if that were so then why would these photos be making the stir that they are? Do you think it would be because while the photos are indeed taken for the sake of the condemned’s families, they’re not usually released publicly like this?
“China currently uses two methods of execution. The most common is execution by firearms, which uses an assault rifle to fire a single shot of an expanding hollow point bullet to the head.[citation needed] Lethal injection was introduced in 1997. It differs from its application in the U.S. in that it is carried out in fixed locations as well as in specially modified mobile execution vans. As lethal injection becomes more common, debate has intensified over the fairness of relying on lethal injection to execute high officials convicted of corruption while ordinary criminals get executed by firearms. It is public opinion in China that lethal injection is an easier way for the condemned to die.
In the past the government collected a “bullet fee” (子弹费) from the relatives of the condemned.” – Wikipedia
I doubt that the one girl is in an electric chair, because the chair itself is far too flimsy to stand the forces generated in an electrocution and has no restraints or electrodes. Also as stated above there is no history of electrocution in China.
Photos I have of verifiable female executions in China do seem to show the women are allowed to dress well. This would make sense in the days when they would be condemned at public sentencing rallies and then taken straight to execution (by shooting)
I do not know whether this practice still continues and whether it has been used in the provinces and cities where lethal injection has replaced shooting.
I think the photos are a motley collection of still images from TV dramas with a few possible real photos of condemned prisoners. It is apparent from the lighting and the artificial electric chair that the pictures of the woman in a red dress are staged, probably from a drama or a movie. The photo of the woman in a blue suit, followed by two attractive guards, looks very much like an entertainment still shot, too. The image of the bound women lined up in front of poles looks peculiar. The women look more like other images of Chinese prisoners awaiting execution, but why so many young women and not enough poles? Other group execution images usually show an assortment of young and old, male and female.
I googled the cited source, a 2005 story in the Heilongjiang Crime Report about a woman condemned to die for killing her boyfriend. The woman in jeans and a white t-shirt being escorted by a guard is supposedly the woman in the story, which claims that the woman was shot and while being transported to the crematorium, she sat up. Her parents begged for mercy, but the woman was executed again. I could not find the original story itself, only BBS and blog posts dating from November 2008.
If there were a Chinese Scopes, it would likely pronounce most of these photos fake and the story about the woman executed twice an urban myth.
@ Richard:
I believe condemned prisoners are still executed immediately after sentencing. The sentencing is done in court, of course, but the condemned, wearing wooden placards bearing their names and crimes, are still sometimes paraded to the execution grounds in the back of a flatbed truck.
I don’t see what the big deal is. Mind you, I don’t like capital punishment to begin with, but still, like you said we have last meals, last rites, etc.
If these photos are making a stir—sorry to say I don’t care enough to google around—I’d say two big reasons would probably be (a) it’s China, (b) they’re women. People like to look at China as execution happy and a purveyor of cruelty. Moreover, anytime women get executed it makes news. Whether it’s because women are still erroneously considered less vicious than men, less cruel, or whether it’s because these women here are attractive, I don’t know. I don’t think you’d have much attention paid to men wearing suits.
Statistically, women are far less violent and physically cruel than men, but individually, a female psychopath is probably capable of the same cruelty as her male counterpart. We are seeing a dramatic increase in violence by girls in schools, and these changes in female behavior are showing up in crime stats, too, although I don’t think violent crime statistics will ever reach gender parity.
I just remembered that China does not tie up prisoners to poles before shooting them. Rather, the condemned is made to kneel and is shot from behind.
I don’t ever want to become the sort of blogger who gives little more than an opinion on something *cough* and then expects his or her readers to do all the hard work of research, verification, and analysis of issues raised for them
(unfortunately I don’t enough of a reputation as an authority on Korean issues to get away with it yet), but in this case, with other posts to write and a 3 year-old who refuses to go to sleep squirming in my lap as I type this, throwing plastic eggs and helicopters at my laptop screen, then I’m afraid can’t do much more right now than say a genuine thanks for the work put into your comments everyone, and I learned a lot from them.[...] may be primping it’s female prisoners before execution <link> which sounds like a terrible damn waste to me. Waste of women that is, not of [...]
The photos are probably fake, prisoners are not allowed to dress up or use make up. China’s death penalty applies to many non-violent crimes such as drug smuggling. Earlier this year a 38 year old women from Zambia was sentenced to death for smuggling 2.5 kg of heroin. The news report say that she’d be executed by “firing squad”.
China doesn’t use firing squads or electric chair. Executions are carried out by specially trained officers with single bullet to back of the head at close range. The execution is performed in remote areas where the prisoner is shot and buried in a shallow grave for their relatives to retrieve later. There is no “fee” for the bullet.
By the end of this year all executions in Beijing will be carried out by lethal injection only. The central government has mandated that lethal injection will be the standard method of execution, and execution by bullet will be phased out across the country.
As of 2007, all death penalty cases are required to be reviewed and approved by the Supreme Court. There’s a panel of 50-100 judges that review these cases in teams. Thus, it’s impossible for executions to be carried out immediately after sentencing. The prisoner has to sit on “death row” while their case is reviewed. If they’re lucky, the death penalty request is turned down. If not, they get tied to a table for lethal injection.