A report delivered recently by Gu
Xiulian, vice chairwoman of the Standing Committee of National
People's Congress, pinpoints some serious problems in protecting
juvenile's rights in law.
Following a previous plan, from which this report is derived, an
inspection team evaluated the enforcement of two laws in July,
namely, Law for the Protection of Minors, Law on Prevention of
Juvenile Delinquency.
Firstly, the report revealed the violation of minors' education
rights. The nine year compulsory education system is far from
perfect in rural areas. Among 2,861 counties over the country, 431
have failed to realize the compulsory education system. The
drop-out rate in rural junior high schools remains at a high level:
from 5 percent to 15 percent in many areas.?
In addition, minors from migrating families do not receive
sufficient education. This is because many urban schools refuse to
include students from migrating families into their education
system, including some public schools. Also the contradictions
between residence registration systems and school registration
management brings greater difficulties to clarify for the migrating
students.
Secondly, the report emphasizes that negative information is
dangerous for minors. According to an investigation, cyber culture
has a great impact on minors, and the Internet-related crime rate
has soured to 25.1 percent early this year, the number being 4.1
percent in 2000. The rampant flow of smuggled and pirated video and
audio products is also dangerous to minors as they contain too much
violence, superstition, porn and terror. Some student-oriented
cartoons and comics, pocket books, strip shows and erotic
entertainment places all do damage to minors' physical and
psychological world.
Thirdly, the report mentions that juvenile delinquency is on the
rise. It is showing some new characteristics. One, more and more
crime is aimed at making money, such as robbery and stealing. Two,
gang crime occupies 70 to 80 percent of all crime. Some gangs
committed complex serious crime, with severe cruelty. Third,
criminals are becoming younger. Four, 60 percent of criminals in
recent years are drop-out students who have no jobs. Five, crime
means are becoming more adult-like and intelligent. Some minor
criminals intentionally damaged crime scenes, some using cloaked
means to escape detection.
Fourthly, the report tells of an insufficient minor protection
system. In 1991, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's
Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of
Justice, jointly issued A Circular on Setting up Coordinated
Working System on Juvenile Delinquency. However, in the past ten
years, most places failed to setup a "coordinated working system".
Many places imprisoned minors together with adult criminals and
many juvenile courts do not have stable structure or personnel.
Although Beijing, Shanghai and some other big cities provide legal
aid to minor defendants, this is hard to carry out in most
cities.
(China.org.cn by Li Liangdu, September 14, 2003)