Death penalty in China: parents on death row
Zhang Shuqin, like most Chinese, is in favor of the death penalty. But she fights, like no one else but her, against the consequences for the children of the offenders. Her orphanage is a provocation to the Chinese authorities - because she tackles the issues that the state is blind to.
Li Siyi was only three years old when she died, but Grandma Zhang can not save all children. The police found the body of the girl in the western Chinese city of Chengdu; she had starved to death in her mother's apartment. Neighbors had complained about the smell of decay. There were scratches on the front door. Li Siyi's mother was in jail for stealing milk and rice from a supermarket. After being arrested, she kept asking officials about her daughter, but they did not listen to her. Li Siyi was left alone.
Children of offenders are being held in clan custody in China - in the spirit of Mao Zedong, who once said, "The hero's son is a hero, and the son of a lazy ice cream is itself a lazy egg." Mao is dead, the stigma has remained. The country is still closing its eyes when the children of offenders land on the street. Only Grandma Zhang helps as much as she can.
Actually her name is Zhang Shuqin. But all children in the sun village call her Grandma Zhang. Because she looks like a grandmother with her friendly laugh, consoles and listens. "Mother of the murderer children" is called the 60-year-old in China. With the sunshine village she scratched a taboo. Zhang wants to show everyone that even the children of criminals and murderers are human. That it's not okay when there's no room for them in school and no job. When neighbors and relatives block the door from them. When they live on the street.
130 children live in the sun village, three-quarters of an hour's drive north of Beijing, the youngest is just half a year old, the oldest is nearing 18. Many children will never see their parents again because they spend the rest of their lives in prison. Some are on death row.
Zhang says the children almost never talk about their parents, also not about their scars and the stitches in the heart. Sometimes she hears her crying when she visits the children's cabins again at night. Zhang also says that she can not relieve children's pain; she can only dry her tears and satisfy her hunger. Once a month she orders a huge cream cake with roses from marzipan. Then everyone gathers in the dining room. Quite silent, and Zhang solemnly asks, "Who has birthday this month? Come forward, and who came to us again, come here?" She lights the candles, the birthday children get the biggest pieces of cake. Some still hum the birthday song all day long.
The primary school of the Sonnendorf is located right next to the dining room. The little ones gather at the gate, stand up in size and march off like little cadets. The middle school is a little further away, as the elderly on their bicycles have swung, it is quiet in the village. Grandma Zhang goes to her office in the shallow boxhouse behind the cherry trees.
She is tall, with short, slightly reddish shimmering hair and a voice that can be heard throughout the village, if need be. She lights a cigarette and just wants to start telling her story, when the phone rings. A pharmaceutical company wants to donate something. "That's great, thank you on behalf of all the kids, but no toy please, we need clothes, food, stockings, exercise books, give something useful," she says and hangs up, but it rings again. She listens to this caller for a long time. And when she answers, she can hardly suppress her anger: "Listen, I was a policeman myself, if we do not help the children, you have to take care of them yourself, they should be grateful."
She still receives such phone calls from police and prison wardens, who do not understand what she does. To date, she receives no financial support from the authorities. 13 years ago, Zhang Shuqin founded her first children's home. There are now six across the country, funded by donations, which she collects. Zhang has saved hundreds of children. It is a border crossing, it needs the support of the government to run their children's homes, while indirectly criticizing the harsh judicial system by bringing the victims to light. Children like Li Siyi, who are easily forgotten after the arrest of their parents.
Zhang has changed China a bitbecause she stands up for the children of offenders to have rights and dignity. Their story begins in December 1948 in the small village of Jianhe in the mountains of the central Chinese province of Shaanxi. Her father was a salesman in the tiny store of the Village Cooperative. There was no electricity.In the winter she slept with her three younger brothers in the mother's bed. She was a strong girl, and when the mother needed firewood, she sent her daughter to the mountains. At 14, she began training in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Then began the Cultural Revolution, also Zhang was infected by the euphoria and tied the armband of the Red Guards. She demonstrated for Mao, even changing her name to Zhang Weihua - "Protecting China." And finally, she even broke up with her parents. "I thought my father was an enemy capitalist," she says today. "He eventually worked in a shop." Her father almost died of grief at the time, she still feels guilty about it today.
Mao died in 1976. When China came to rest, Zhang found a job as a barefoot doctor at a sickbay in the mountains. She mixed herbal teas and taught the farmers the basic rules of hygiene. Then, three years later, the Beijing government introduced one-child policy. Doctors and nurses across the country were forced to do compulsory abortions on state orders - including Zhang. She took hundreds.
I killed so many babies
It's strange, but Zhang laughs. "I've killed so many babies in the past, which may be why I love to take care of children today," she says. She laughs again. Maybe that was not a joke. Zhang would not say that for sure. But one hears her that her past has left wounds.
Zhang was glad when she left the infirmary. She became a journalist, eventually writing an article on the hygiene conditions in the prisons of her home province. The authorities liked the in-depth research, and offered her a job at the Shaanxi Prison Administration. She assumed that she visited all 20 prisons in the area and found that all the prisoners had children and were waiting for their parents, some standing there for months, some for years.
The children were sorry for her. And she heard the stories of prison inmates telling of their forgotten children. As a former reporter she first of all scented an interesting story. And she decided to get to the bottom of the topic. In 1989, she wrote an article for the prison newspaper she called "The Sons and Daughters." She interviewed a prisoner who had not seen his five children in years. The mother was also in prison. "Give me the address," Zhang said, "I'm looking for your kids." A few weeks later, she actually drove to the man's home village. The eldest daughter had long since died. The others lived in a cave with their grandmother. They slept on a stone bed and covered themselves with newspapers. A son had broken his arm, but because the grandmother had no money for the doctor, he had not healed properly. One of the children wore a green shoe that they found in the trash.
Zhang went home, put her uniform back on the next morning, sat in meetings and ate lunch with colleagues. But in her head the thoughts whirled, she thought of the four sad children and the dead girl. And for the first time, she felt something like anger in herself: it was unfair, the children suffered the most under the imprisonment of their parents.
When the article was published, she received dozens of letters from other prisoners. Zhang spoke with her superiors and also inquired at other prisons. And she learned that some inmate children were even housed in juvenile prisons because nobody cared for them.
It was the time of economic reforms. Deng Xiaoping had opened the country and started a huge upswing. In small portions he returned the freedom to the Chinese. China reveled in consumption and wanted to forget the past as soon as possible. Social problems were hushed up. There was no place in the new China for the children of the prisoners. Zhang initially hoped that the government would recognize the problem and help the children.
She waited until 1996. Then she quit. It started very small, unnoticed by the Beijing government. She even sold her own household items to finance the construction of the first sunshine village. But her idea was so unique and new that she quickly got around the country. It was not long before the prison directors sent her more and more children, thankful that she was taking a problem from them. "Many in the police now understand that children also become criminals when they live on the street and have to eat their food," Zhang says. Even the Beijing government has seen that.
The night was short. It is Saturday morning, 5 o'clock. The boy Ying Erqing has wake-up service, he never sleeps long anyway and is full of energy early on. In turn, he opens the doors to the children's huts. Then he puts the whistle in his mouth, he puts his flat hands to his ears and blows with full force. "Quick, fast, get up!" He shouts. Wordlessly, the children roll up their blankets and drag themselves to the breakfast hall. Afterwards they gather at the entrance gate, Zhang Shuqin is already waiting for them.
Every weekend, the residents move to the fields. The children's home produces most of its food itself, everyone has to help. 50,000 peach trees belong to the sun village, they also grow potatoes, onions and radish. It's heavy field work, but Zhang has no choice. The village is financed exclusively by donations. And sometimes the money is so tight that she does not even know how to pay the next electric bill. "We can only feed the kids if everyone touches," Zhang says.
They work in the field until the sun is high in the sky. Zhang Shuqin tirelessly wields her shovel, so she works her way forward and pulls a tail of sweaty children behind her. When she finally goes home in the evening, to her little brick house on the outskirts of the village, she looks after her old mother, who lives with her. Even her younger daughter - she has two daughters, 40 and 35 years old - lives with her. Zhang is divorced and raised the children alone. She seldom sleeps more than four hours, the next morning the alarm service with the whistle goes through the village again; shortly afterwards she is sitting at her desk again.
Only a few years ago, Zhang could have been jailed for her own work. That the government tolerates the sun village is a sign of China's changes. More and more Chinese people realize that children should not be punished for their parents' mistakes. The Chinese media have often reported on the village and grandma Zhang in recent years. Even some pop stars were visiting. Every weekend students from Beijing travel and play with the children. A retiree offers English courses. A cook grills with the kids. Many Beijingians want to help.
In the sun village a new China is created. But more and more people are also asking on the Chinese Internet why Zhang Shuqin has to solve the problems that the state is blind to. She is not an oppositionist, she is exclusively concerned with the welfare of the children. It is not in principle against the death penalty. "We have 1.3 billion people, we need a strict education and strict rules," she says. Most Chinese think so.
The judicial authorities are also beginning to understand that prisoners are human beings, the tolerance grows. Sometimes Zhang Shuqin accompanies her children on death row to visit her parents one last time. Often, everyone in the room will cry: the prisoners, the children, the guards, and grandmother Zhang.
Info: Capital punishment in China
In 2008, according to Amnesty International, at least 2,390 people were executed in 25 countries worldwide. For over 70 percent of these killings, the People's Republic of China is responsible, 1,718 executed death sentences are known to Amnesty. However, since China has refused for years to clarify the reasons and frequency of executions, it is estimated that the number of unexplained cases is more than 6,000.
More than 60 offenses are punishable by the Chinese legal system; These include assault and murder as well as tax fraud, fraud, property damage and theft. Even insults can have fatal consequences in the People's Republic.
The convicts die from lethal injection or are shot in the neck, especially in rural areas. Even minors were sentenced to death by the Supreme People's Court. A large part of the Chinese population supports the death penalty: the legal system is understood as a means of the state to protect the economic and social claims of the community - the rights of individuals are subordinated to this goal.
