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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

China should abolish the death penalty. It is abused in horrible ways including forced organ harvesting.

The number of executions in China is a state secret, but it's estimated to be around 5000 per year -- more than all other nations combined.

Bodies of executed prisoners have long been a major source of organ transplants in China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China

According to several reports, political prisoners and prisoners of conscience (e.g. Falun Gong members) are being executed in the thousands and harvested for organs. These are not convicted murderers, but people who have never even received a trial.

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This just in: Westerner demands that thriving civilization, centuries older than his own, adopt his culture's standards of human rights.

China's total lack of an independent justice system and the resulting atrocities is not news, but bears repeating.

If you don't believe in universal human rights, there's probably nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. I guess the 20th century's bloody history didn't teach mankind very much, when people still look up to "thriving" nationalist states that build economic growth on the tortured flesh of their citizens.

I don't like when other countries execute large numbers of people for reasons I disagree with, but I'm not going to go over to China and tell them how to run their country.

> but I'm not going to go over to China and tell them how to run their country.

That's the problem. Your (as a country or people) culture ends where basic human rights begin.

Maybe that's how it works in your culture. But no, I don't think there's any such thing as universal human rights, or at the very least, that such a notion is just cultural imperialism with a friendly face.

> China should abolish the death penalty.

Every country should, not only China. A murder is still a murder, no matter where and why it's been committed.

I believe that it's useful. In the past century the death penalty should have only been used in a handful of cases.

It should be for the really "broken" people who are a danger to everyone no matter where they are. Gacy, Dalmer, etc.

Is it murder ? damn right. Do you keep a rabid dog alive because you think it's wrong to kill ?

> It should be for the really "broken" people who are a danger to everyone no matter where they are. Gacy, Dalmer, etc.

Yeah, but it's not. There are plenty of terrifying cases of people who were considered "broken", who were convicted and murdered by the system and later found innocent. Murder has no place in a modern society.

Don't you have prisons where you live? Do you know what a life sentence is? It is possible to have justice without committing the same murderous crimes as the criminals we have to protect the society from.

You're right, I'll tell China to get right on that.

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