Social Issues

China top court calls for death penalty for crimes against women, children

Beijing, March 9 (EFE).- China’s Supreme Court President Zhou Qiang called on toughening sentences to punish crimes against women and children and said they warranted the death penalty in the most serious cases.

Zhou told state newspaper Global Times during the rendering of accounts of the court before the National People’s Assembly, which celebrates its annual plenary session, considered the most important in the country, until Friday.

According to the newspaper, the president of China’s highest judicial body said that “for crimes that defy the most essential of the law and ethics, such as those that harm women, children and the elderly, the death penalty should be approved in line with the law.”

The recently disclosed case of a woman who was sold and lived in chains for years has outraged Chinese society, which asks its leaders for harsher punishments and greater efforts in the fight against trafficking, which caused the issue to be addressed at the assembly.

Zhou promised for this year “serious punishments” for crimes of sexual abuse and the trafficking and sale of women and children.

In his 2021 report to lawmakers, the official said the Supreme Court issued 3,356 restraining orders to protect victims of abuse.

Zhan Jung, Supreme People’s Prosecutor’s Office head, also said the prosecution of human trafficking will continue to be strict, adding that he committed himself to the cases that have been unsolved for the longest time and involve kidnapping and trafficking suspects.

Human trafficking is a persistent problem in China, exacerbated by the already repealed one-child policy and by the imbalance between the sexes, which has caused, according to the World Bank, that there were 42 million more men than women in 2017.

Single men sometimes resort to buying women from remote parts of China or neighboring countries such as Vietnam.

In recent years, technologies such as DNA analysis or facial recognition have contributed to solving cases of sale of children and women. EFE

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