Paul Mooney, Foreign Correspondent
BEIJING // Di Chen arrived in Beijing last week aboard a flight from her home in Austria to join her sister, Ran Chen. The homecoming was not a happy one. Their father, Wo Weihan, had been sentenced to death for gathering military and political intelligence for Taiwan, and the two women knew that this could be their last chance to see him.
At 4pm on Thursday, China’s ministry of foreign affairs confirmed that the sisters, who both carry foreign passports, would be able to visit their father the next day.
“We had hoped that the Supreme People’s Court, in its review of the case, would recognise that such a severe punishment simply didn’t fit the criminal allegations against Wo Weihan,” said John Kamm, the executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation. “We don’t see how this case meets the threshold of ‘extremely serious or heinous crimes that lead to grave social consequences’ that China has set for capital cases.”
Ran Chen and Di Chen expressed their deep anguish over the sudden and unannounced execution of their father. “The entire process – from arrest to execution – was conducted in a way that was degrading to both my father and our family,” they said in a statement. “We were all misled, led to have false hope, denied the fundamental right to be informed, and forced to suffer.”
According to the Dui Hua Foundation, there are 68 types of crimes in China that can be punished by the death penalty, including such non-violent crimes as official corruption and drug trafficking.
Beijing claims the number of death sentences fell by 30 per cent in 2007 compared with 2006, as the authority over the review of all capital cases was restored to the Supreme People’s Court in Jan 2007. Although the number of people executed each year is a state secret, it is believed China executes more people each year than any other country. Dui Hua estimates that there were as many as 6,000 people executed in 2007.
The statement by Wo’s daughters said that because he was not aware he would be executed less than 24 hours later, there was no opportunity to say goodbye to his family or to say any final words.
The daughters said they were “deeply shocked, saddened, disappointed and outraged”, by what happened.
“Throughout these four years since our father’s arrest, the family was kept in the dark. After Thursday, we were led to believe that we could see our father one more time. The execution was carried out in secrecy while we hoped.
“My father was put to death, so was our hope in the Chinese justice system.”
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