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on which the court's work are based are Party policy and the law of the State". Although the country has no published code, there are regulations covering special penalties, such as "regulations concerning penalties against counter- revolutionaries". High, middle and lower courts are established at different local levels of authority, but important cases, especially when the death sentence is involved, are brought up before the Supreme Court.
The normal legal procedure allows the accused to make one appeal, although if he is “not convinced after the second trial, he must observe the decision and go where he is sent, but he can still appeal to the next court up". The function of public prosecutor does not exist any longer. The role of defence lawyer has also been abolished in the last few years, but the accused "has the full right" to defend himself or to “ask a kinsman...or people from the institution to which he belongs to speak for him". There still remain special courts to deal with particular cases, such as military courts, courts in mining areas and railroad courts.
Regarding the death penalty, it was stated that "extremely few criminals are sentenced to death...Although some criminals have committed monstrous crimes, the anger of the masses can be appeased by sending them to reform farms." In spite of the maintenance of ordinary prisons, especially in large cities, it is now thought that most prisoners spend their term of imprisonment working in farms or factories. Some of these production units have only prisoners as workers- falling therefore within the category of "labour camps"-whereas some others employ free workers as well as prisoners. This has been substantiated by the first autobiographical account of life in Chinese labour camps by Bao Ruo-wang, a French national released in 1964, when France and the People's Republic of China established diplomatic relations, after seven years in detention as a "counter-revolutionary".
According to Mr Bao's account, prisoners in Peking's prisons and in the labour camps of the northeast were generally well-treated by the guards and administration. Intense political re-education was part of daily routine, and the completion of imprisonment depended in various ways on the "political attitude" of the prisoners. The prison diet varied. There were times when the food provided was extremely deficient: Bao comments that this coincided with two years of famine conditions affecting the whole country.
Republic of China (Taiwan)
Work on behalf of prisoners in the Republic of China (Taiwan) has continued to prove difficult as a result of the lack of detailed response from Taiwanese authorities. In consequence, valuable contacts have been made and built up outside Taiwan, and these are now likely to prove useful in the light of the official announcement in April 1975 of a reduction of sentences for all prisoners in Taiwan.
Amnesty International members in Japan have continued to provide informa- tion on Taiwan through their links with overseas Taiwanese groups. In view of the difficulty in obtaining information from inside Taiwan, efforts have been made, particularly by the AI German Section coordination group, to establish supplementary channels for information. One particular feature of the German