There's nothing like total convenience.
This is a story from last year, but it still packs a punch. Not only for the cold, clinical efficiency of such an invention as a mobile execution bus, but for some of the crimes mentioned below that warrant such a fast execution.
Then again, wealthy Europeans are still flooding into China and paying to dollar for fresh organs from recently executed prisoners, so the demand for such vehicles is clearly there.
Presumably these vehicles will be warehoused for the duration of the 2008 Olympics. Then again, with government officials from Iran, Iraq and Indonesia in town for the Games, maybe they could showcase the death bus and pick up a few international sales.
All these buses need are mini-crematoriums hitched to a trailer behind and they'll be complete.
From USA Today :
The country that executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined last year is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections. Unlike the United States and Singapore, the only two other countries where death is administered by injection, China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped "death vans" that shuttle from town to town.
Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely.
A glossy brochure touting the benefits of the death van is available in Chinese.The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China "promotes human rights now," says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van...
Amnesty International estimates there were at least 1,770 executions in China in 2005 — vs. 60 in the United States, but the group says on its website that the toll could be as high as 8,000 prisoners.
Executions in death vans are recorded on video and audio that is played live to local law enforcement authorities — a measure intended to ensure they are carried out legally.
Makers of death vans say they save money for poor localities that would otherwise have to pay to construct execution facilities in prisons or court buildings. The vans ensure that prisoners sentenced to death can be executed locally, closer to communities where they broke the law.That "deters others from committing crime and has more impact" than executions carried out elsewhere, Kang says.
From the outside, the vans resemble the police vehicles seen daily on China's roads. A look inside reveals their function.
"I'm most proud of the bed. It's very humane, like an ambulance," Kang says. He points to the power-driven metal stretcher that glides out at an incline.
"It's too brutal to haul a person aboard," he says. "This makes it convenient for the criminal and the guards."
Tycoon Yuan Baojing was executed in March in a death van, in northeast China's Liaoyang city. He had been convicted of arranging the murder of a man trying to blackmail him for attempting to assassinate a business partner.
Sixty-eight different crimes — more than half non-violent offenses such as tax evasion and drug smuggling — are punishable by death in China. That means the death vans are likely to keep rolling.
And English.
