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Staring death in the face

Reading Time:5 minutes
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A MAINLAND POLICE officer with an unblemished record of 10 years' service is demanding compensation from the central Government after spending 26 months in prison, eight of them on death row, having been sentenced to death for the murder of two of his colleagues - one of them his own wife.

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The Workers Daily, the newspaper of China's official trade union movement, has published three remarkable articles about the tragic injustice done to Du Peiwu, 33, an officer in the drug rehabilitation division of the police in Kunming, capital of the southwest province of Yunnan.

They are remarkable in giving an inside look at the workings of the mainland's justice system, how the police tortured one of their own officers to obtain a conviction and how the procurate and the judges who sentenced Mr Du ignored obvious discrepancies in evidence.

On the positive side, they show how two dedicated lawyers saved the life of their client despite strong pressure not to appeal the death sentence.

It was about 8pm on April 4, 1998 that Mr Du's wife, Wang Xiaoxiang, an officer with the police communication division, and Wang Junbo, deputy chief of police in Shilin county outside Kunming, were murdered in a minibus - both shot through the chest.

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When police reached the scene, they found the two bodies inside the vehicle and the handgun of Wang Junbo missing. It was this gun the killer or killers had used to shoot the two victims.

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