hankyoreh

Execution day in any provincial city or town in China is an extravagant affair. Handcuffed and shackled, the condemned men - and sometimes women - are paraded in public on the back of trucks before being taken to the execution grounds. There, they are usually forced to kneel in a row, and dispatched one by one by an executioner with an automatic assault rifle - one bullet through the back of the head, one bullet through the heart. In recent years, lethal injections have become quite common, but death by shooting is still the norm. Execution by lethal injection may be carried out either within the prison or in specially built execution vans - converted minibuses which have been equipped with a gurney for the convict, and space for a medical doctor, the executioner and a courtroom official in the back.

No one knows exactly how many people are executed in China, but Amnesty International believes around 1,500 persons are put to death by shooting or lethal injection every year. China executes more people annually than the rest of the world combined, accounting for around 85% of globally documented executions. Murderers, rapists and drug traffickers make up the majority of those executed, but death sentences for "economic crimes" are becoming more common. Amnesty has also expressed concern about reports of the sale of organs harvested from executed prisoners without permission.

By contrast, China's ally Burma - which is ruled by an even more repressive regime - seldom sentences people to death, and executions in prisons are rare. The best-known case in recent times was, when on April 6, 1985, Major Zin Mo, a North Korean agent, was hanged at Insein Jail in the outskirts of the then capital Rangoon. In October 1983, he and two other North Korean agents, Kim Chi O and Kang Min Chul, had managed to infiltrate Rangoon where they planted a bomb in the Martyrs' Mausoleum, a memorial hall erected to honour Burma's independence hero Aung San who was assassinated in 1947. The bomb killed eighteen visiting South Korean officials, including Deputy Prime Minister So Suk Chun and three other government ministers.

Kim Chi O was killed by Burmese security forces in the ensuing gunbattle, while Zin Mo and Kang Min Chul were captured alive. Kang's life was spared because he cooperated with the prosecution. He still languishes in Insein Jail, but is reported to be staying in the so-called "Villa Wing" - a small private house with a tiny garden surrounded by high barbed-wire fences.

In March 2004, nine pro-democracy activists were, rather unusually, sentenced to death in Rangoon for having contacted opposition groups in exile and for "planning to assassinate government officials." Among them was Zaw Thet Htwe, a.k.a. Thet Zaw, chief editor of one of Burma's most successful magazines, Eleven Sport. However, it appears that none of these death sentences has been carried out so far.

Nevertheless the official statistics - and official reports - are grossly misleading. Extrajudicial executions are almost daily occurrences in certain border areas, where ethnic rebel armies are active. Men, women and even children are shot on the mere suspicion that they have cooperated with the rebels. Villages, in which the rebels collect food and seek shelter, are routinely burnt down. And not every inmate in Insein jail is as fortunate as Kang, who has his own house. Torture, ill-treatment and brutal investigations are common, and often result in death. Among the best-documented cases are:

* U Ba Thaw, a.k.a. Maung Thaw Ka, an ex-navy commander who became an author, was sentenced by military tribunal to 20 years imprisonment in October 1989. He was a close associate of the now detained opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and had been instrumental in persuading her to appear in public during the pro-democracy uprising in August the year before. Before his arrest, he had been suffering from chronic spondylitis, a spinal disease. A severe beating during a hunger strike in Insein in September 1990 left him paralysed. He received only a minimum of medical care from the prison doctors and was denied access to specialists. Following a heart attack, he was sent to Rangoon General Hospital in June 1991. He died three days later at the age of 65.

* U Tin Maung Win, 50, was a member of the post-independence Rangoon University Students' Union and also joined the 1988 uprising. He was a prominent member of the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi's political party, and was elected a member of parliament for a constituency in Rangoon Division in May 1990 - and arrested five months later. It is not known if he was ever charged or tried, but he died in detention in January 1991. His family reportedly saw his body, which they said showed signs of injuries. Burma's military government announced that he had died from leukemia, but there had been no indication of him suffering from that before he was arrested.

* Ko Kyaw Myo Thant, a 25-year-old student leader, was arrested in July 1989 and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for "breaking martial law." He was severely beaten, and as a result he was unable to digest food properly. He was taken to a hospital, but it was too late. He died in May 1990.

* James Leander "Leo" Nichols was a Burmese of partly Greek origin who operated a shipping company before the military takeover in 1962. He remained in Rangoon even after his business was nationalized, and was appointed honorary consul for Norway in 1968, and for Denmark in 1978. In 1993, Burma's military government withdrew permission for him to represent foreign nations, but he continued to act as de facto honorary consul for Norway, Denmark, Finland and Switzerland. More significantly, in a Burmese context, he was the godfather and close friend of Suu Kyi, who used his fax machine to send articles to a newspaper in Japan, the Mainichi Shimbun and its English-language version, the Mainichi Daily News. He was arrested on April 5, 1996 and charged with operating a fax machine and a phone line "without official permission." On May 5, he was sentenced to three years in jail - and he subsequently died on June 20 in prison. He was 65 at the time of his arrest and suffered from diabetes, hypertension and heart problems, and was reportedly denied his usual medication. He was hastily buried in a cemetery in Rangoon the day after his death. No autopsy was conducted and no member of his family was allowed to attend the funeral. The government described him as an "unimportant crook" who met "his due fate."

* Aung Hlaing Win, a 30-year-old NLD member, was arrested on May 1, 2005 and handed over to Burma's notorious Military Intelligence Service, MIS, for interrogation. Nine days later his family was notified that he had died from "a heart attack" while being questioned by MIS officers. A doctor who examined the body stated that he had injuries from beatings, three broken ribs, a bruised heart, swollen throat and infected intestines. His body was not returned to the family but cremated secretly by the MIS.

* Thet Naing Oo, a student activist during the 1988 uprising, was arrested in 1998 and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment. He was released in November 2002, but beaten to death on March 17 this year by members of the fire brigade and the military-sponsored mass organisation Union Solidarity and Development Association, USDA, during a brawl. His funeral on March 20 was attended by more than 1,000 mourners, including NLD members, veteran politicians and student leaders.

The United Nations has appointed several successive special rapporteurs on human rights in Burma, but to no avail. The most recent rapporteur, Brazilian lawyer Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, stormed out of Burma in March 2003 because a microphone was found under the table where he was "confidentially" interviewing political prisoners in Insein. His predecessor, Mauritian Rajsoomer Lallah, was never even permitted by the regime to visit Burma, and his successor - if anyone is appointed - is unlikely to be able to conduct independent investigations inside the country.

Pinheiro believes there are 1,200 to 1,300 political prisoners in Burmese jails, and Amnesty International has issued repeated reports on deaths in custody. Amnesty has also issued a long report on extrajudicial killings in Burma, especially in the areas where the ethnic minorities live. Put together - deaths in custody and executions without trial - it is quite possible that it is Burma, not China, that has the dubious distinction of being the world leader in state-sponsored killings of its citizens. The difference is that China at least attempts to justify all its executions by holding show trials. In Burma, people are being killed with impunity.

Bertil Lintner is Thai Correspondent of Far Eastern Economic Review.