China rejects Church appeal - executes three Filipinos
(March 30,2011).. Regardless of appeals from the Church and Catholics in the Phlippines,
China has carried out the death sentence on three Filipinos accused of drug dealing.
Sally Ordinario Villanueva, Ramon Credo and Elizabeth Batain were killed by lethal
injection. The executions took place in the prisons of the cities of Xiamen and Shenzhen.
Chinese police had arrested the two women and man separately in 2008, after finding
about 4 kg of heroin in each of their suitcases. In China, the possession of just
50 grams of drugs carries the death sentence. Recently, the Philippine government,
church and rights groups sent open letters to the Beijing government and organized
vigils to ask for a pardon. President Aquino had repeatedly called for dialogue
on the issue with Beijing, however, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that drug trafficking
is a serious crime and that justice was done. On Tuesday, a Filipino bishop interviewed
by AsiaNews criticized the case, asking countries like China, to abandon the use of
capital punishment, and instead to commit themselves to improving their justice systems,
which are often imperfect and corrupt. According to Amnesty International, China
is the only country where executions have increased. In 2010 alone, over 1000 people
were executed. In the rest of the world, the number of executions carried out last
year was 740.