China records, videotapes interrogations to protect suspects’ right

WUHAN—More than 80 percent of Chinese procuratorates had live recorded and videotaped interrogations on job-related crime suspects through August 2007, an official of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) said in the Hubei Province capital on Tuesday.
Wang Zhenchuan, vice procurator-general of the SPP, said 2,829 procuratorates at all levels had implemented the regulation issued by the SPP in early 2006 that interrogations of suspects in job-related crimes, mainly pertaining to graft and dereliction of duty, should be synchronously recorded and filmed.
“It has strengthened the protection for human rights of the suspects,” he said. Wang said no cases of extorting confessions by torture or other law-violating measures had been found among the interrogations that had been videotaped. “Live videotaping of the interrogations has helped improve the prosecutors capability of investigating job-related crimes and has changed their way of law enforcement,” he said.
Meanwhile, the records and videotapes can also be used to protect interrogators from being falsely accused and prevents suspects from abusing the judicial procedure by revoking their confessions for fabricated reasons.
In accordance with the laws, 4,802 audio and video documents were shown or heard in the courts to overrule more than 80 percent of the applications for withdrawing confessions, according to Wang. He said the SPP and local governments have allocated more than 500 million yuan (about 66.7 million U.S. dollars) to equip procuratorates at all levels and train technical personnel. They will continue to help the rest of the prosecuting bodies, most in the undeveloped central and west regions, to carry out the regulation. “All interrogations of suspects in job-related crimes should have real-time recording and videotape in procuratorates at all levels,” he urged.
Prosecutors in east China’s Zhengjiang Province first tried to record and film interrogations in 1999. In early 2006, the SPP decided to promote it nationwide and issued a regulation requiring procuratorates to record interrogations. In December 2006, the SPP issued new regulations detailing procedures for recordings and videotaping. According to the regulations, interrogations should be recorded and filmed live and in whole — the recording should begin when the suspect enters the room for questioning. They should end after the suspect has checked the confession transcript, signed his or her name and put a thumbprint on the document. Raw videotape materials must be put into a sealed bag after the technicians, prosecutors and suspect have all put their thumbprint to it.
The regulations also stipulates specific procedures for the storage, copying, transfer and reception of recordings and videotape materials. According to Chinese law, it is the function of the people’s procuratorates to investigate crimes at work. These include corruption, bribery and dereliction of duty. The SPP has embarked on a campaign to clean up illegal interrogations. It decreed in March 2006 that synchronous video and audio recordings shall be adopted during interrogations in major cases such as murder and gang crimes, for instance, by procuratorates at all levels.—Xinhua