China broadcasts final hour before executions

BEIJING -- It was reality television in the extreme.

Chinese state television broadcast Friday nearly one hour of live footage of the last moments of four foreign drug traffickers about to be executed for the killing of 13 Chinese fishermen in 2011 on the Mekong River. Although the cameras pulled away before the lethal injection, the unprecedented coverage unleashed a storm of criticism and debate about the death penalty.

Psychologists decried the live coverage as distressing to children, while lawyers complained that it violated a clause in the criminal code against parading the condemned before execution.

China executes about 4,000 people each year, more than all other countries in the world combined, although the numbers and the crimes carrying the death penalty are gradually being reduced.

"I don't know of any other country, not Iran, Afghanistan or North Korea, that has nationally broadcast in this way the last moments of an executed prisoner," said Nicholas Bequelin, Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Although many Chinese were shocked by the live coverage, they applauded the death sentences as just retribution for a particularly violent crime. The 13 Chinese fishermen were ambushed, then shot to death while tied up with rope, their bodies dumped in the river.

The kingpin executed was Naw Kham, 44, a Myanmar national who allegedly commanded a militia of 100 men in the Gold Triangle region. Two others executed Friday were from Laos and one was Thai.