Battling “infiltration, subversion and sabotage by hostile forces” is a key priority this year, China’s chief prosecutor has said, with terrorists, ethnic separatists and religious extremists in his sights.
Magnus Llewellin
Sunday 13 March 2016 / News
BATTLING “infiltration, subversion and sabotage by hostile forces” is a key priority this year, China’s chief prosecutor has said, with terrorists, ethnic separatists and religious extremists in his sights.
In a speech to the annual session of China’s national legislature, Cao Jianmin said combating cyber-crime and ensuring national sovereignty in cyberspace topped the list of 2016 priorities.
Prosecutors will also continue to follow up on cases brought to as part of an almost three-year-old nationwide anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by the ruling Communist Party’s watchdog agency, Mr Cao said.
Those include agents of foreign governments, civil groups which challenge the party’s absolute authority, religious dissenters such as the underground church and the banned Falun Gong meditation sect.
Those campaigning for ethnic rights are also frequently cited, including exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama and advocates for the Turkic Muslim Uighur minority from the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
In an accompanying address to the legislature, top judge Zhou Qiang said Chinese courts convicted 1,419 people last year of national security and terrorism crimes that carry potential death sentences.
That compares with 712 people sentenced for incitement to separatism, terrorism and related charges in 2014, before last year’s passage of a sweeping new national security law.
Fighting corruption also remains a priority, with prosecutors handling 4,490 cases involving more than one million yuan (£107,700) last year, up 22.5% from 2014, Mr Cao said in his report. That was out of a total of 54,249 officials investigated.
Those prosecuted for corruption last year include 22 former officials at the ministerial level or above, including Zhou Yongkang, a past member of the party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee, who was sentenced to life in prison.
China already blocks a wide range of foreign websites featuring news, research tools such as Google, social media including Facebook and Twitter, and file-sharing sites such as YouTube.
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