China's Judiciary to end repeat petitions
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China's judiciary and law enforcement agencies are seeking to establish a system to end repeated lawsuit-related public petitions, a trend that observers say takes up an excessive amount of their resources.
Experts, however, said that the government should warn against the abuse of such a system, which may hinder the course of justice.
The Supreme Court announced Wednesday that major and repeated lawsuit-related public petitions that have been handled and terminated by the Supreme Court and local high courts will not be addressed further, the Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.
The Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security and the Minis-try of Justice have also issued measures regarding the termination of lawsuit-related public petitions and the identification of unreasonable petitions, Xinhua reported.
China launched the petition system through letters or visits in 1951, with the aim of opening up public channels to report improper or illegal actions by government agencies and civil servants, or to raise suggestions.
Governments at or above the county level have to set up a department for letters and visits, while public petitions related to lawsuits are to be handled by judicial and law enforcement agencies.
The Political and Legislative Affairs Committee (PLAC) said last year that lawsuit-related petitions still counted for a large proportion of the total, and are characterized by repeated complaints or visits to Beijing.
Zhou Benshun, secretary general of the PLAC, said in August last year "problems can be solved without coming to Beijing."
The Ministry of Justice released figures at a meeting Wednesday pointing out that judicial and administrative departments across the country had dealt with 6,501 lawsuit-related petition cases by the end of October, 616 of which had seen positive results.
Ma Yingxin, a judge at the Supreme Court, told the Southern Metropolis Daily last month that the average number of daily visitors this year was about 350. The most they received in a day was 870, much fewer than the record high of 2,000 in 2007.
Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer at Beijing's Qijian Law firm, said it was a heavy workload for the top court to receive so many visits, and the termination mechanism would be a good way of relieving the pressure.
"However, if some desperate petitioners are deprived of their last resort, this may result in more conflicts or even extreme violence," Liu told the Global Times Thursday.
He suggested setting up a special department to treat those repeated petitions.
"If their cases are truly and honestly reviewed and investigated, and the petitioners can get a reasonable response, there won't be so many stubborn petitioners," Liu said.
Yu Jianrong, director of the Institute of Rural Development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said citizens have the right to make complaints, and there should not be a restriction on the number of times they do so as long as their actions are within the law.
He warned that abuse of the measure would destroy the hopes of those who had been wrongly charged or sentenced.
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