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Aerial view of Chongqing, China.
Hong Kong
CNN
—
China has executed a couple for throwing two young children out of a high-rise apartment window, sparking nationwide outrage.
The man and his girlfriend were found guilty of killing his children from his first marriage by accidentally causing them to fall from a high-rise building in the southwestern city of Chongqing to start a new family.
According to China’s Supreme Court, the father, Zhang Bo, had an affair with Ye Chengchen and initially hid the fact that they were married and had a child, but when Ye found out, Zhang divorced his wife. did.
The court said Mr Ye considered Ms Zhang’s two children to be an “obstacle” to their marriage and a “burden to their future joint life”. She repeatedly urged Mr. Zhang to kill the infants and threatened to break up with him if he did not.
According to the court, in November 2020, Zhang conspired with Ye to throw her 2-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son out of her 15th-floor apartment while they were playing next to their bedroom window, killing them. .
Zhang and Ye were sentenced to death in December 2021.
The Supreme People’s Court said the couple’s crime posed a “grave challenge to the legal and moral bottom line” and that the motive behind the crime was “extremely despicable” and “particularly cruel,” according to state news agency Xinhua.
News of their executions attracted hundreds of millions of views on Chinese social media site Weibo and became a top trending topic.
The top comment, “They deserved to be punished,” received 27,000 likes.
“Very satisfying!” said another with 31,000 likes.
According to a survey released in 2020, 68% of Chinese citizens support the death penalty.
But John Juan Liu, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong who authored the paper, told CNN on Thursday that online views may not accurately reflect public opinion in China.
His research shows that Chinese people who express political views online are more likely to show support for the death penalty.
“There is a lack of a clear understanding of the public’s views on the death penalty in China and a lack of rigorous data collection channels,” he said.
The 2020 paper is based on the last available national data collected in 2013.
“I don’t know if public perception has changed since then,” he said.
China does not provide transparent information on the total number of executions, but human rights group Amnesty International says the country executes and sentences thousands of people to death each year and is considered the “world’s top executioner country.” ing.
Wednesday’s execution also focused on lethal injection, the main method used to carry out capital punishment in China.
“It’s basically euthanasia. They had an easy time,” the comment posted on Weibo received 20,000 likes.
Some recently noted the execution of Alabama inmate Kenneth Smith with nitrogen gas, but experts say this new method can cause undue suffering and even torture.
The execution was hailed by some Chinese social media users as a fitting punishment for a more serious crime.
“Why do I think a 22-minute execution is so appropriate for those who viciously murdered their wives, parents, children, and serial killers?” The top comment reads: Said.