8
you will not be told, we know what the figures are, we're not going to tell you what they are".
Question:
Was the figure for Xinjiang 110?
Senator Schacht: Well, they said around a hundred if I· remember correctly. And, we estimate maybe about a 110 for Sichuan. We know those figures were given as approximates, so therefore you can made your own estimates on what error of margin and so on. The other thing that they did give us is an accurate figure what they claim is an accurate figure
is that three were killed for what we called, what in one sense could be termed, counter-revolutionary crime, that's the Baren incident.
Ian Russell: There's clearly an amount of sensitivity about the whole death penalty issue. We pointed to the inconsistency by saying that, if the death penalty is so effective and you advocate it to use for serious crime, and you publish over 90 people were executed in the local newspapers and you post it up on the street saying they've been executed, why won't you publish the total figures throughout China? It's a question they couldn't really answer. I think there's clearly a sensitivity to having those raw figures come out.
Senator Schacht: We saw at Sichuan on the street wall, one of the usual displays of a recent execution parade of, openly displayed and described, I think it was four or five trucks with a couple of prisoners in the back of each surrounded by guards being taken off to the execution as part of the process of explaining to the people: "This is what happens to you". But this is what we find a strange dichotemy. All of this individual publicity in the press, but they will not mention the total figure. My only supposition is they are worried that if the total figures for China were published it will show that they probably have the largest number of executions of any country in the world. Now, with the largest population in the world I suppose that's not surprising that they have the death penalty. I think that publicly worries them that it all adds up to a 1000, 2000 people a year or 3000 or 4,000. This figure in western countries will look horrific, particularly in my own country where there is no death penalty, it would be used as a public issue in our campaign against the use of the death penalty which the Australian Parliament and the Government is committed to.
Question: When you visited last year there was a small debate going on in China that actually became a political issue in some of the newspapers, the publication of an article advocating chucking this counter-revolution statute in favour of some more western sedition standards and so on and so forth. Has there been any progress on that score?