China considers law on people's judicial supervisors

China is promoting a people's supervisors system that would involve members of the public independently overseeing court cases, a statement by the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said Wednesday.

The legislation will be an important move to strengthen restriction of procurators' power in the prosecution process and will help improve the protection of the suspects' rights, the statement said.

The judicial authorities released a reform plan on Tuesday to better the role of people's supervisors, stripping the procuratorates of their right to appoint and manage the supervisors and giving them more power.

The plan also stipulates that the people's supervisors will be selected and assessed by justice authorities rather than the SPP.

The reform has resolved the previous contradiction of "procurators themselves select supervisors" and will increase the system's credibility, the SPP elaborated in the statement.

The plan would limit the members selected from government organizations to less than 50 percent of all appointed supervisors.

Supervisors can appeal for a review if their suggestions were rejected by procuratorates, according to the SPP.

The prosecuting authorities should document their confiscation, keeping, transferring and return of properties for the supervisors' inspection, it said.

The SPP launched a pilot program to establish the system of people's supervisors in 2003. It was comprehensively implemented in procuratorial organs throughout the country in 2010. Endi