1st Ld-Writethru: China Focus: China pledges to clean up Zhou Yongkang's adverse impact

The Communist Part of China (CPC) must "wash out the stain" left by Zhou Yongkang, a former senior leader who blatantly traded power for money and sex, a conference on political and legal work declared Wednesday.

Zhou, former member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in charge of political and legal work, was arrested and expelled from the CPC in December for seriously breaching the Party's political, organizational and confidentiality rules, as well as alleged crimes.

"Zhou severely harmed the Party and the country and led a number of officials astray", according to a statement issued by the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee after the conference.

"[Laws were broken] primarily because some leaders deviated from Party ideals and beliefs, and their values were distorted", the statement said, calling Zhou's case "a grave lesson".

Zhou's case was used to illustrate the need for enhanced political and ideological education for officials.

"Corruption eradication in the political and legal field remains tough," the statement said, adding that violations still occurred.

The commission vowed to show no tolerance of corrupt officials who abused power, embezzled fund, put a price tag on promotion, or accepted bribes.

Moreover, relevant authorities were told to abolish targets for detention, arrests, prosecutions and convictions as well as other "unreasonable items for assessment".

The statement also touched upon torture.

It stressed that human rights must be respected during investigation and interrogation, as an emphasis on securing an oral confessions over hard evidence, and the practice of using torture to so do, had resulted in wrongful convictions.

A higher court in Inner Mongolia ruled in December 2014 that teenager Huugjilt, who was found guilty of rape and murder in 1996, was innocent and had been wrongfully executed.

Additionally, it was announced at the conference that a second round of judicial reform measures will be tested in 11 provincial regions.

One of the prominent objectives is to establish circuit courts across different administrative regions to facilitate lawsuits filed by local communities and address conflicts at a local level.

Meng Jianzhu, head of the commission, urged the judiciary and police to continue fighting terror and crimes with greater awareness of governance with the rule of law and to build multi-level support systems.

President Xi Jinping wrote a written instruction on political and legal work on Tuesday, ordering Party departments to support judges and prosecutors in exercising their duties independently. Endi