The fate of Akmal Shaikh, who was put to death in China early on Tuesday morning, got very little media attention until the Chinese Supreme Court rejected his final appeal. That was on 21st December, and his execution was scheduled for the 29th.
I had been aware of Akmal’s case before then; I’d seen the occasional newspaper report, and I’d watched Stephen Fry’s video appeal a few weeks ago. But I hoped, and expected, that the Chinese authorities would reprieve Akmal. It was clear Akmal was innocent, that he’d been duped and that he was mentally ill. Surely even the Chinese wouldn’t execute him ?
But for me everything changed on the 21st. This man was going to die in 8 days time. I was shocked.
I knew that Reprieve (http://www.reprieve.org.uk/akmalshaikh), an excellent campaigning organisation, was working tirelessly for Akmal. I knew that the British Government had been making representations on his behalf - Gordon Brown had apparently spoken to Premier Wen about Akmal during the Climate Change Conference earlier this month.
Logically I knew I could make no difference. But I also knew that if I just sat and watched events unfold, I would never forgive myself. I had to get involved.
It was nearly Christmas. There had been significant media reports after the rejection of Akmal’s appeal on the 21st. But then it all seemed to go quiet. No ‘Question Time’ on the BBC. No ‘Newsnight’. No ‘Andrew Marr Show’. Incessant Christmas music and frothy lightweight chatter. Many people on holiday. With everyone’s focus on turkey, Christmas jollity and presents, definitely not a good time to be condemned to death.
I e-mailed and wrote a letter to Gordon Brown; e-mailed my MP; e-mailed the Chinese Embassy. I tried to get a Twitter trend going - #stopexecutionofAkmalShaikh - but I’ve only got a few Twitter followers, and that didn’t take off.
And I joined a Facebook group called “STOP THE EXECUTION OF AKMAL SHAIKH”. When I joined, the group only had about 400 members. This soared to 1500 by the morning of the 29th December, and quadrupled to reach 6000 that evening.
On Facebook I joined others in discussing what could be done. Soon I found I had been put down as an Administrator. I hadn’t been asked, but I didn’t mind. In fact I was glad.
The idea was floated of holding a vigil outside the Chinese Embassy. To be honest, at first I wasn’t sure whether that would do much good. My feeling was that it might be more effective if we could persuade the Prime Minister to step up the pressure on China.
On Christmas Day I e-mailed Reprieve, and received a reply from Clive Stafford Smith, its Director. Clive thought a respectful candlelit vigil would be worthwhile.
I liaised with Maya Farr, who had been one of the original members of the Facebook group. Between us we arranged the vigil, which was to start at 11am on the scheduled execution day, 29th December. I suggested that we should also hand into the Chinese Embassy a letter, signed by all those attending the vigil. I wrote that letter and also the Press Release which we sent out the day before to all those on the media list supplied by Reprieve.
We weren’t sure at first whether we could get enough people to make the vigil viable. But we eventually had about 75 people who said they would definitely attend, and many others who said they might come. Unlike a demonstration a vigil can be effective with a relatively small number of people.
I also got the job of telling the police what we were going to do. They were very appreciative of this, and could not have been more helpful. I made it clear that it was going to be a quiet dignified peaceful vigil.
I was the first to arrive at the vigil, and introduced myself to the police officer outside the Embassy. I agreed that we would assemble on the other side of the road in Portland Place. Maya was the next to arrive, and before long there were also several TV crews. In the space of the next few hours Maya and I - and later on Akmal’s brother and other members of his family - did countless interviews. I myself did TV interviews for BBC News (twice), Sky News, Aljazeera, and even a Chinese TV channel. I was also interviewed twice by the Press Association (video unit and print journalist) and by LBC Radio and ABC news from Australia. I’m sure Akmal’s family members did far more interviews. In addition to those already mentioned, Channel 4, London Tonight, ITN, GMTV, as well as various French and Polish news outlets, did interviews with Akmal’s family, Maya and others.
The result of all this was that we had already achieved considerable publicity for Akmal’s plight even before most of his supporters had turned up. At last his plight was getting the publicity it needed. As far as I can gather, it was the lead story on Sky News and the BBC throughout the day. This had an affect,too, on membership of the Facebook group which soared from 1500 in the morning to 2500 early in the afternoon and 6000 by the end of the day.
The TV crews stayed there all day and were constantly updating the story. All this publicity was achieved with a small number of supporters. In the morning we probably had no more than 50. This grew in the early afternoon when more of Akmal’s relatives arrived. Although we had originally decided just to hold candles, some of the younger family members came with some homemade placards with brief pleas such as “Save Akmal’ and “Akmal has bipolar”.
At its peak we maybe had 100 people. People of all ages, races and creeds standing there with their candles on a bitterly cold December day. As it grew dark around 4pm the atmosphere was very poignant with everyone holding white candles which illuminated the homemade placards.
It was a privilege meeting members of Akmal’s family including his uncle, cousins, nieces and nephews of all ages as well as his brother, Akbar, a gentle, softly spoken man.
After all at the vigil had signed the letter to the Chinese Ambassador, Akbar and six other family members; Laura from Reprieve; Maya and I crossed the road to the Embassy. The police has said that we could have a delegation of ten, but advised us that it was unlikely that the Embassy would even accept the letter. While the rest stood on the pavement, I pressed the intercom buzzer. I said that I had a letter for the Ambassador. I was asked who I was, and I explained that I was from the Facebook group ‘Stop The Execution of Akmal Shaikh’. Then to everyone’s surprise, not least mine, I was told to come in and the door opened. (The Embassy had been shut all day because it was a public holiday.) I entered the Embassy, and on the left - behind a metal grille - was the receptionist. I passed him the letter under the grille. He was friendly enough, and said that he would give the letter to the Ambassador right away. I thanked him, came out and told the others and the waiting TV crews what had happened.
Shortly afterwards I talked to one of the members of a group which has been demonstrating outside the Chinese Embassy for eight years, protesting against the persecution of Falung Gong practitioners in China. He was very surprised that the Embassy had accepted our letter. They had never accepted a letter from his group. He told me that he thought this meant the Chinese planned to grant Akmal a reprieve.
The vigil had been scheduled to end at 6pm, but most of us were there until about 8pm. I felt we had achieved all we could by then. The idea had been to get maximum publicity so that as many people as possible would e-mail or phone the Chinese Embassy and also the Prime Minister, asking him to intervene personally. My own feeling was that Gordon Brown should pick up the phone and make a direct plea to the Chinese Prime Minister or President. In the event the matter seems to have been dealt with by the Foreign Office Minister, Ivan Lewis. He had a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador, made some very strong statements on behalf of Akmal, and revealed that the Government had made 27 representations in total to the Chinese authorities.
When I left at 8pm, there were only three or four people still at the vigil. Unless there was an earlier reprieve, they were talking about coming back before 2.30am when the execution was due to take place. In the event shortly after I left they were apparently joined by a few others so a dozen or so people continued the vigil outside the Chinese Embassy. Good for them. They were there until 4.15am when the awful news came through that Akmal had been put to death.
When I got home, I grabbed some food, then divided my time between TV news channels and our Facebook group. It was very emotional. Few of the Facebook supporters felt they could go to bed until they knew what had happened. At around 2.15am, Clive from Reprieve posted an encouraging message, saying we shouldn’t give up hope as it was possible there could still be a last minute reprieve. He instanced one of the cases he’d been involved in when a reprieve was granted literally within the last minute.
But it wasn’t to be. Eventually at about 4.15am the news channels confirmed that Akmal had been killed by lethal injection. There was an outpouring of grief and anger on the Facebook group. Frankly, I couldn’t take any more of it. I needed to be with my own thoughts for a while, and then at about 5am I got to bed for a disturbed few hours of sleep.
I have always been opposed to the death penalty. I remember, as a teenager, the campaign to get it abolished in Britain. I have never forgotten Sidney Silverman. He was the Labour MP whose abolitionist bill was eventually passed in 1965.
But even those who support the death penalty would be hard pressed to make a case for the execution of Akmal Shaikh. After selling his minicab business in London in 2004, he went to Poland. There his mental state seems to have got much worse. Apparently suffering from bi-polar disorder, which can make its victims delusional, he announced he was going to set up an airline, but had neither the funds nor expertise to do so. Eventually he ran out of money, and was homeless in Poland. He was befriended by some people who said they would help him achieve his dream of becoming a pop star in China. They agreed to meet at the airport. There the ‘friends’ said there was only one seat left on the plane. They told Akmal to take it, and said they would join him later. He agreed to take a suitcase for them. Unknown to him, it contained about 4 kilograms of heroin.
After a half hour trial, represented by a Chinese lawyer who didn’t speak very good English, Akmal was sentenced to death. At his appeal he insisted on making a long rambling speech to the court. The judges openly laughed at him. When asked if he was mentally ill, he said “no”. By then Reprieve had got involved but the court refused to allow either a local doctor or a forensic psychologist to examine him to assess his mental state.They then rejected his appeal. And so did the Chinese Supreme Court on 21 December.
In the letter to the Chinese Ambassador we wrote:
“We are writing to appeal for mercy to be shown to Akmal Shaikh, a British citizen, who is due to be executed in China tomorrow (December 29).
We know that the Chinese people care deeply about family and we would like to join Akmal's children and the rest of his family in begging for mercy for their father.
We respect the Chinese people, your great culture and your family values. We have been impressed by your huge achievements in recent years, and greatly enjoyed the wonderful Olympic Games you held last year.
At the very least we would urge a stay of execution so that the case can be reviewed by the local court, which originally imposed the sentence, as well as by the Supreme Court.
We take the issue of drugs smuggling very seriously, but we believe there is considerable evidence that Akmal is mentally ill, and genuinely did not know that the suitcase he was duped into carrying contained drugs.
We would ask that a full mental health examination should be carried out to assess Akmal’s condition.
Meanwhile we request that you pass on our plea for clemency to President Hu Jintao and the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.”
But this letter - like all the other appeals - had no affect whatsoever on the Chinese authorities.
I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising. This is a regime which earlier this month sentenced Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for co-authoring a Charter calling for political reform. I call that exercising his right to freedom of expression; the Chinese authorities called it “subversion”.
This is a regime which put more than 1700 of its citizens to death in 2008, 72% of the executions carried out in the world. And that is just the known executions. The actual total may be far higher.
The trend in the world continues to be against the death penalty. In 2008 only 22 of the world’s 195 countries inflicted it. Five countries - China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the USA - were responsible for 93% of all the world’s executions. Of these five countries, only two - Pakistan and the USA - are democracies, but Pakistan’s is very fragile and only America is a long-standing democracy. It would make the position of the United States much stronger in calling for human rights to be respected in countries such as China if the US abolished the death penalty.
Let us hope that 2010 sees further progress towards the abolition of this abhorrent penalty.
