China: death penalty for advocating ‘Taiwan independence’
China: death penalty for advocating ‘Taiwan independence’
China instated the death penalty for "particularly serious" cases involving supporters of Taiwanese independence. New judicial guidelines, entitled "Opinions on Punishing the Crimes of Splitting the Country & Inciting Splitting the Country by 'Taiwan Independence' Diehards," were jointly issued by.....
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Sensationalist headline, trading journalistic integrity for website clicks. But I suppose "shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years" doesn't draw as much attention.
Imprisonment for simply saying something that in no sane world would be considered a crime.
But would give you a hell of a beating in the spanish Catalan referendum on Independence which was just a bunch of years ago and not some ancient happening.
There are at least 5 openly independentist parties, some of which held government, in Catalonia.
How many are there in China?
I'll notify Julian Assange.
You wouldn't get imprisoned for simply saying it, though.
"If the conduct specified in Article 7 of these Opinions is carried out and the circumstances are serious, causing serious consequences or causing particularly bad effects, it shall be deemed as a "serious crime" "
You'd have to take a more active role, and your participation would have to lead to something more major. It even goes on to say that if you renounce your stance, the charges may be dismissed.
It's sufficient to mention it in a wechat group with >10 people, which already qualified as instigating "the masses".
Interesting, I'd like to do more reading on the subject. Do you have any preferred sources?
Sure, though quite a few of those things are not explicitly written down, and court transcripts are only published in high profile cases, so you won't find any official reference to the group size. So it's mostly from second hand experience and hearsay. You pick up one or the other thing if you live in China for nearly a decade.
But here's some official reading - I hope the sites are accessible from outside China, that's something I can't validate right now.
You should be good to go with google translate; though specifically for Chinese legalese, I suggest yandex translate (assuming you don't speak Chinese):
https://m.66law.cn/laws/1470356.aspx
https://www.spp.gov.cn/spp/llyj/202111/t20211130_537133.shtml
http://legal.people.com.cn/n1/2021/0416/c205462-32079979.html
Excellent, thanks.
Almost all of these "national security" trials are done in complete secret by the Adjudicative Committee, which is a political CCP body that oversees the public legal system. Its exact workings are a state secret, but it generally reviews all court proceedings and defers to the public court for most matters. However for any case which involves foreign affairs or national security, there is a high chance that the Adjudicative Committee will hold a national security trial in secret and deliver the verdict to the appointed trial judge, who will read the verdict into the public record.
You don't even have to say it. Go hand out "free Taiwan" pamphlets in tiananmen square and I promise you that you will be arrested extremely quickly and tried in secret. Your "trial" will be a judge telling your lawyer the charges, verdict and sentence to an otherwise empty courtroom. If you are very lucky you will be deported with time served.
Source: I have family in China who are quiet dissidents.
Do you have any other sources that can be verified? Otherwise, I'll have to dismiss your claim as baseless. But like I said in other comments, I'm referring to the article and how it sensationalized the death penalty for website clicks, not about China's intent behind the law or it's application.
You can literally travel to China and find out yourself
Baseless, got it. Thanks.
Such a dishonest reply. As the guidelines specifically even forbid using honest means to further a political goal. And the punishment goes up to the death sentence. But then you are a cheerleading an authoritarian government. Seems par for the course.
The guidelines categorize and outline specific actions that constitute crimes of secession and incitement to secession, including:
- Initiating or establishing organizations, plans, or programs aimed at promoting Taiwanese independence.
- Attempting to alter Taiwan’s status through legislative means or referendums.
- Seeking international recognition of Taiwan as an independent entity.
- Using one’s job or influence, such as in government, education, or media, to misrepresent or falsify the history of Taiwan’s status as part of China.
- Consistently taking part in or playing a major role in activities that support Taiwanese independence.
The new standards stipulate severe punishments for those identified as leaders or significant participants in secessionist activities, and classify actions causing “significant harm to the state and its people” as offenses that may result in the death penalty. Other punishments range from life imprisonment to fixed-term imprisonment, similarly depending on the severity and role in the activities.
In response to the new guidelines, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council issued a statementemphasizing the democratic freedoms enjoyed by Taiwan’s citizens. The council asserted that Beijing has no jurisdiction over Taiwan and that the new laws are therefore not binding on the people of Taiwan. The council further criticized the Chinese Communist Party’s actions as detrimental to cross-strait relations.
I'm not cheerleading anything, this is about an article. I have no political goal.
As they post from .ml
those identified as leaders or significant participants in secessionist activities, and classify actions causing “significant harm to the state and its people” as offenses that may result in the death penalty.
I have this cherry for you to pick, if you want. Anyway, if your point is "independentism is not exclusively punished by death in China"... Yay? Best dictatorship ever.
I stated my point in my original post.
lemmy.ml is at it again
Can you elaborate?
Sucking Xi Jinping's salty taint.
How so?
What are you referring to here? Your statement seems to contradict not just the headline but the entire article.
The first link referenced in this article. That article mentions the punishments and the severity of the crime required for those punishments.
This article seemed to only latch onto the more dramatic portions and threats of the death penalty to generate clicks.
I agree with you that the article is clickbaity, it implies that it's the default punishment. But technically, it isn't wrong. It's still possible to get death penalty for advocating for Taiwan independence.
Without looking at your post history, I think your downvotes are unjustified. You merely pointed out the clickbait. But it would be better if you presented it in more affirming way, cause right now your comment kinda reads like you're refuting the article and "it's not a death sentence, it's only a 3-year imprisonment", which is also not true.
The clickbait nature of the headline does seem to imply that it's death right off the bat. I never said that death wasn't on the table, as unfortunate as that is. The death penalty is far from the only outcome, which is difficult to surmise from just this one article alone.
However, I'm not going to edit the comments I made in an attempt to present it differently. My goal was to get people to read into it, question their assumptions, and not take the article at face value. Media literacy is a skill and involves going well past the headline, so hopefully some people saw that while trying to prove me wrong.
I feel the downvotes are unjustified as well, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. It's a sensitive subject for a lot of people, and I saw that going into it.
- For those who commit the acts specified in Article 2 of this Opinion, the ringleaders or those who commit serious crimes shall be sentenced to life imprisonment or fixed-term imprisonment of ten years or above.
Among them, those who cause particularly serious harm to the state and the people and whose circumstances are particularly bad may be sentenced to death
; those who actively participate shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than ten years; those who participate in other activities shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention, control or deprivation of political rights.
Tbf it's not super clear i had to read the whole thing 3 time. Sorry about the brillant people calling you a tankie, they prob don't even know what it mean..
Yeah, it's legal language that's been translated, so I can't expect vernacular clarity.
I don't get the tankie comments, either. My original post was about the article being biased towards sensationalism. It seems lots of people have strong opinions and feel the need to lash out.
I mean I think it makes sense to focus on the most severe possible punishment in this context.
That said, I did not find any mention of the death penalty in the linked page. I do not speak Chinese so I was relying on the translation feature in my browser, so I’m not sure if it was mistranslated, the article is wrong about that, or what. Curious if anyone has further information on this.
I used google's webpage translation. It does mention death as a penalty, but it's far from the only possible outcome.
OK so probably a translation issue. But to respond to your statement, if your city announced it would punish illegal parking with penalties ranging from 3 years imprisonment to fucking murder, which would you be more concerned with? And which would you rather local journalists make you aware of? Would you really be criticizing their clickbait headlines if they ran a similar story?
Like I said, focusing on the more severe possible punishment makes perfect sense in this context. Not to mention that all of the punishments are extremely excessive.
I never discounted the inclusion of the threat of death, I only commented on the fixation on it in that article. Of course the inclusion of the death penalty needs to be a part of the discussion.
We can spend the rest of forever discussing what-ifs and hypotheticals. I don't think it does the original discussion justice to boil it down from the severity of secession to parking issues. I fear your simplification misrepresents the original discussion, as the nuance of the China-Taiwan situation cannot earnestly be recreated with parking violations in a city.
But yes, to answer your question, I do think that journalistic integrity is important at any level.
If you keep reading in that translated article linked in the original article, it says that if you change your stance and make an honest attempt to undo the damage you did, the charges may be dropped. So one could end up with no punishments at all.
Tankies like you are embarrassing.
How am I being a tankie?
you know, I at least appreciate on here that, even if you're going to be massively downvoted for basically no reason, at least there's someone here making this post and then backing it up in their comments, rather than me just having to look at the headline and be like "yeah that sounds like fishy north korea style clickbait xenophobia to me" without wanting to actually look into it.
So, good job.
I saw this duck over here, quacking and waddling around, so I called it a duck. Some people took offense, apparently. There was some good discourse, though.
Tankie
In what regard?
You can't talk sense into these people, the propaganda and xenophobia runs too deep. China bad, to these people, regardless of what they actually do. These people don't want the truth. They just want their koolaid.
It seems that way. I only addressed the article, and some of them were talking as if I was advocating death penalties for people expressing themselves.
That or you're ignoring that they absolutely are establishing a death sentence for it. Will they apply it to everyone?
No, probably not. But who could stop them if they did decide that all Taiwanese advocates are extreme cases? Keeping in mind that their definition of extreme seems to be "leader."
Personally I find your casual acceptance of the right of the state to execute anyone short of a brownshirt contemptible enough by itself, but go on about how they're only going to put the non-leadership people in prison for 3 years.
My comments aren't advocating, ignoring, or accepting the death penalty. I can't speculate to China's intent behind the law, or assume it's application.
I was addressing the sensationalist nature of the article, about how it latched onto the passage about death for the purpose of generating clicks.
To discuss the why or the how behind the law is another matter entirely and goes well beyond the scope of my comment. I'm sure there are plenty of discussions out there that cover those topics, however.
It is funny to see how wild people get when someone points out an article about China is bad or a headline is deceptive, if the article was about Ukraine or somewhere doing the same thing then then the only comment you'd see is 'bad headline!' followed by endless nuance.
A lot of people don't like their binary thinking and simplistic worldview tainted.
Absolutely. I agree that life would be so much simpler if it was only black and white issues, but rarely is that the case. And I get it, those binary beliefs are comfortable. But we need to endure the difficulty of questioning our assumptions, pushing out of that simplistic worldview, and learning. It's the only way we grow as people.