Beijing, February 15 China said today that in 2022 it had the lowest rate of violent crimes – such as homicides, robberies and kidnappings – in the past two decades, which according to its Supreme People’s Court (CSP), made the Asian country “one of the safest in the world”.
CSP Deputy Prosecutor General Sun Qian assured a press conference on Wednesday that the percentage of violent crimes classified as the most serious was 3.9% in 2022 compared to 25% in 1999, local press reports.
He added that, of all criminal cases prosecuted last year, 85.5% were minor offenses in which sentences of less than three years were handed down.
According to the prosecutor, this means that the inhabitants’ feeling of security has already increased “from 87.5% in 2012 to 98.6% in 2021”.
Over the past five years, Chinese prosecutors have prosecuted 42,000 organized crime cases and more than 3,600 people known as “protective umbrellas” – a term usually referring to those responsible – for their involvement in these crimes, Sun said.
With regard to anti-corruption offences, 78,000 civil servants and staff members have been prosecuted.
Among them, more than 100 occupied provincial, ministerial or high-level positions at the time, underlines the CSP.
Additionally, a total of 11,000 people have been prosecuted for paying bribes, Sun said.
Not in vain, after coming to power in 2012, the current General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CCP) and President of China, Xi Jinping, launched an anti-corruption campaign in which several senior Chinese officials were sentenced for accepting bribes worth millions.
Although the campaign, one of Xi’s flagship programs, exposed major cases of corruption within the CCP, some critics pointed out that it was also used to end the political careers of his rivals. .
On the other hand, the prosecutor also indicated today that robberies, which for more than four decades had dominated the list of the most serious cases, were replaced in 2019 by others such as reckless driving or in a state of danger. drunk.
On the other hand, cybercrime showed an upward trend, with 129,000 people prosecuted for this type of offence.
Similarly, the prosecutor’s offices have appealed a total of 41,000 cases over the past five years, which represents an increase of 18.9% compared to the previous five-year period.
China’s judiciary, which does not operate independently of the executive or legislative branches, has a conviction rate for defendants of about 99 percent, according to 2013 data from the China Law Yearbook.
Organizations such as Amnesty International (AI) denounce that torture continues to be part of police routine to extract forced confessions in China, a country with a high percentage of convictions and the nation with the most executions in the world. EFE
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