BEIJING: Procuratorates have intensified their efforts to ensure the integrity of the judicial system, initiating legal measures against 1,976 judicial staff last year for crimes such as dereliction of duty, abuse of power and coercion, which were discovered through judicial supervision, said the top procuratorate’s annual work report.
The work report of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate was delivered by SPP Procurator-General Ying Yong on March 8 to the second session of the 14th National People’s Congress, the country’s top legislature, for review. It was approved by the NPC on March 11. Among these cases, 150 involved individuals holding positions at or above the division level. In terms of charges, five types of crimes, including dereliction of duty, abuse of power and favoritism, accounted for 75.9 percent of the total, according to a white paper on criminal prosecution work in 2023, issued by the SPP on March 9.
According to the Criminal Procedure Law, procuratorates can initiate investigations into crimes committed by judicial personnel, such as illegal detention, coercion to extract confessions and illegal searches, which infringe upon citizens’ rights or undermine judicial justice, as discovered during their legal supervision of litigation procedures. One case mentioned in the SPP’s work report involved an incident in March 2013, in which four police officers, including Ma, the head of a prison unit in Gansu province, beat a prisoner to death and falsely claimed the death was due to illness. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
