LRF is releasing a new fact sheet: "China's Death Penalty: Profiting from Execution."  This fact sheet explores China's use of the death penalty, the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners, and the sale of the plastinated bodies of former prisoners.

If you still have questions about the death penalty in China after reading the fact sheet, please leave your questions in the comments section of this post.  We'll be sure to address your questions in the future.

Also, make sure you check out LRF's Laogai fact sheet:  "The Laogai: Exercising Dictatorship Over Dissent."

Earlier today China executed a British citizen for the first time in 50 years. Akmal Shaikh, reported to suffer from "severe mental illness", was arrested in 2007 for attempting to smuggle heroin into China from Tajikistan. 

In response to the execution, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a statement strongly condemning China's refusal to grant clemency, especially given the uncertainty surrounding Shaikh's mental health status. China responded simply, "We express strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British reaction.  We hope the British side will face this case squarely and not put new obstacles in the way of relations between Britain and China."

Furthermore, the extensive international criticism prompted China's "legal experts" to defend the execution as "legitimate" and in accordance with "China's Criminal Law".  Wang Mingliang, a professor of criminal law at Fudan University in Shanghai, even went as far as to say that Shaikh's execution had "nothing to do with human rights concerns." (Read more after the jump)

Beijing recently announced that “all criminals sentenced to death in Beijing will receive a lethal injection instead of being executed by gunshot.”  Lethal injection, explains the director general of the Supreme People’s Court’s research bureau, is “more humane”.

In order to prepare for the switch, Beijing’s No. 1 Detention Center has built a death factory “lethal injection site” which is “equipped with rooms for execution, observation and the storage of bodies.” Training will soon begin for the judicial police, “who will deliver the prisoners and administer the injections” as well as “medical staff who will supervise the use of the drugs” and then harvest the prisoner’s organs “confirm the deaths.”