CHINA'S top judge has pledged to open up the judicial process to ''mass supervision'' and to fight governmental interference.
In an unprecedented move, President of the Supreme People's Court, Ren Jianxin, also vowed to punish judicial and police officers responsible for wrongly adjudicated cases or other instances of the miscarriage of justice.
Speaking at the end of a five-day meeting of the country's senior judicial cadres, Mr Ren said the ''serious enforcement of the law was the holy task of the people's judges'' as well as a guarantee of ''the stability of the order of the market economy''.
For the first time since the communists swept to power in 1949, Mr Ren promised to ''put the entire adjudication process under the supervision of the masses through open investigations, open cross-examination, open debate and open sentencing''.
''We must uphold the principle of open adjudication and earnestly safeguard the litigational rights of people who take part in lawsuits,'' the People's Daily yesterday quoted participants in the meeting as saying.
The semi-official China News Service (CNS) last night quoted Mr Ren's deputy, Gao Changli, as saying the courts must observe the principle of every citizen being equal before the law.