Beijing (AsiaNews) - The Chinese people's Supreme Court begun publishing its judgments on a new website, including verification of death sentences issued by other courts. The move should make the country's judicial system more"open", but many analysts explain that it is useless, because there are too many restrictions on the publication of the texts and in any case - as pointed out by President Xi Jinping - the legal system is under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
Liu Xiaoyuan, a Beijing lawyer, argues that the new site "is not satisfactory and certainly not enough to change things, because it only contains the judgments of the Supreme Court. The court should provide explanations for the cases that it cannot display publicly to further boost transparency in the judicial system. The problem is that some local courts' verdicts are actually made by officials, not judges. "
It should also be considered, said lawyer Zhou Ze, that "the disclosure of judgments is still highly selective. The court should provide explanations for the cases that it cannot display publicly to further boost transparency in the judicial system." But the same high court, in 2010, had declared that the sentences "should be made public, but not those involving the state and commercial secrets."
