ILL EXCUSES

Seventeen-year-old Batmenkh was sentenced to 15 years in prison for stabbing his friend Bai Yongchun to death following an argument over a game of mahjong. 　

But he would not serve the majority of it until 27 years later, largely due to a grieving mother’s decades of persistence and a local law enforcement official. 　

In early September, China Comment, a magazine published by the Xinhua News Agency, picked up her story, which brought to light allegations of corruption in the Inner Mongolia justice system. As public outcry erupted, media used a new term to describe the controversy: zhimian fuxing, or penalty on paper.　

It was reported that following Batmenkh’s conviction, his family filed for medical parole to place him in a healthcare facility, claiming he was permanently incapacitated. Law enforcement and justice officials signed off on the request. 　

According to China Comment, the detention center in Chen Barga Banner (a banner is an administrative division in Inner Mongolia equivalent to a county) that previously held Batmenkh recorded that he had completed his prison term in 2007. Specific documentation about his case has gone missing.　

Batmenkh later served as a village head in Chen Barga Banner and was a delegate to the local people’s congress. 　

Ever since Bai Yongchun’s death, his mother Han Jie had petitioned against Batmenkh’s release. Her pleas went unanswered until 2016, when her case caught the attention of Hasibagen, director of the Chen Barga Banner public security bureau (PSB). 　

Through her efforts, Batmenkh was sent back to prison the following year to serve out the remainder of his sentence. But Han is pushing for a deeper investigation into his release.　

“I want to know how a murderer was set free and who was involved,” Han, now 74, told NewsChina. “I refuse to die until I get answers.”　

On the night of May 12, 1992, Batmenkh called Bai to his home. An argument broke out and escalated quickly. 　

“Batmenkh was hot-tempered,” Han said. “It all happened in under 10 minutes,” she added. 　

According to the 1993 verdict from the intermediate people’s court in the city of Hulunbuir in Chen Barga Banner, Bai had quarreled with Batmenkh over a game of mahjong at Batmenkh’s home. Bai struck Batmenkh, who grabbed a knife and drove it three times into Bai’s chest. 　

Batmenkh and another friend took Bai to hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival. Bai was 19 years old. Doctors said he had bled to death and one of the stab wounds had ruptured his heart. 　

“We were all shocked by the killing, because Batmenkh and Bai were good friends and their families got along well,” Bao Yuqin, a local villager and friend of Han, told NewsChina. “Bai was an honest kid, and nobody understood how something like this could happen,” she said.　

Batmenkh was charged with intentional homicide on November 23, 1992. In June 1993, Batmenkh was tried as a juvenile and received a sentence of 15 years. 　

“There is no issue with the actual judgment. It conforms to China’s laws on juvenile crime,” Mao Lixin, executive director of the Criminal Trial Advocacy Center at the China University of Political Science and Law, told NewsChina. 　

Batmenkh was granted one year of medical parole for kidney disease. His mother and uncle had helped him apply, according to China Comment. He was released from hospital on September 28, 1993, less than three months after his sentencing and 18 months after he was first taken into police custody. He never went back. 　

Fourteen years later in 2007, the detention center of Chen Barga Banner issued Batmenkh a stamped certificate which said he had completed his prison term. 　

Media reports called the process zhimian fuxing, meaning “serving sentence on paper.”　

Villagers told NewsChina they were aware Batmenkh did not serve his sentence. They said that Batmenkh appeared healthy and had since married, despite his medical parole.　

A Chen Barga Banner document showed that Batmenkh worked as a village accountant between June 2008 and October 2009 before serving as village director for the next eight years. In 2009, he joined the Communist Party of China (CPC). He was elected as a delegate to the banner’s people’s congress three years later. 　

“I petitioned the local PSB many times. They always said they would handle my complaint but never followed up,” she told NewsChina. “A former deputy director even ran me out of the station, saying police affairs are none of my business. He called me crazy,” she said. 　

Han said her family did not support her campaign. She eventually divorced. After her oldest son passed away from illness, Han had to petition on her own. She said although her daughter was concerned the petitioning was taking a toll on her health, she never offered to help. 　

“I worked part-time jobs and sold herbs to get by,” Han said, adding that she had sold all her cows to raise money for her petitioning. “I had thoughts of suicide after failing so many times, but I never went through with it. Instead, my determination to petition became even stronger,” she added. 　

Han’s tireless campaign caught the attention of Hasibagen, then director of the Chen Barga Banner PSB in 2016. Hasibagen assigned a team to reopen the case based on Han’s submitted documents.　

“Hasibagen and Shi Hongshan, then political commissar of the Chen Barga Banner PSB, both took the case very seriously,” Lu Wenfeng, director of the Chen Barga Banner PSB, said during a recent Xinhua interview. “We were promoting rule of law in those years and Batmenkh’s case came as a shock in that climate.”　

According to Shi Hongshan, local detention centers can neither grant medical parole unless the prisoner’s life is in danger nor handle sentences longer than one year. 　

“Batmenkh was a felon with a 15-year prison sentence, so the [banner-level] detention center wasn’t authorized to grant medical parole. This was a serious violation of laws and regulations,” he said. 　

Batmenkh was detained again on April 7, 2017. Three days later, 36 villagers filed complaints with the county’s PSB, accusing him of taking bribes and embezzlement. Authorities later found that Batmenkh embezzled more than 500,000 yuan (US$71,427) in government funds allocated for grasslands protection. 　

In June 2018, five months after he was dismissed from the CPC, Batmenkh was sentenced to three years in prison for corruption. Combined with his unserved sentence for intentional homicide, Batmenkh received 15 years in prison. He will be released on April 10, 2032. 　

Batmenkh was transferred to Hulunbuir municipal prison on September 27, 2017. The same day, Han signed an agreement with Chen Barga Banner PSB. The bureau pledged to investigate Batmenkh’s previous release and report their findings to higher authorities. In return, Han promised to “no longer petition any department in any way.” 　

Han showed NewsChina a government response to her petition dated June 19, 2019 that said authorities would investigate the Chen Barga Banner PSB for not properly monitoring Batmenkh during his medical parole. It also read that two officials involved in enabling Batmenkh’s political career were punished. 　

According to the WeChat account of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Political and Legal Affairs Commission, provincial judicial authorities set up a team to investigate Batmenkh’s release and pledged to make the results public. 　

Han told NewsChina that when members of the team visited her on September 8, she gave them a list of people she believed were responsible. The list named former senior judicial officials from Chen Barga Banner, as well as Batmenkh’s mother and uncle, who were also local officials according to media reports. Also listed was Batmenkh’s cousin, named by media as Baiyintala (transliteration), deputy director of the Chen Barga Banner People’s Congress. When Batmenkh was arrested for homicide, Baiyintala was working with the local disciplinary inspection committee. 　

However, no official source has confirmed Baiyintala’s involvement or his relationship to Batmenkh. 　

The case involves other suspicious circumstances. Han said local authorities told her all the documents about Batmenkh’s medical parole and records from his time at the detention center were missing. Several officials involved in his medical parole have since either died or, after 27 years, were too old to recall the case in detail. 　

“Batmenkh’s case is very serious and has severely hurt the victim’s family. But given the case’s long timespan and list of people of interest, an investigation will take time,” Li Wenhe, current Party secretary of the Chen Barga Banner Politics and Law Committee, told NewsChina. “But despite these difficulties, we’ll do a thorough job and hold those responsible to account to address any public concerns.”　

Those concerns involve similar cases of corruption. Just one week after Batmenkh’s case was made public, the Discipline Inspection Committee of the CPC Central Committee announced that 65 officials and government employees in Inner Mongolia had been punished for falsifying parole documents in the case of Wang Yunhong, a man who had been sentenced to death for murder with a two-year reprieve. His penalty was later reduced to 15 years in prison. 　

Another controversial case emerged last year, when Sun Xiaoguo, a high-ranking member of an organized crime ring in Yunnan Province who had been sentenced to death over two decades earlier for homicide and rape, was falsely released on medical parole. Found guilty of organized crime and based on his two previous convictions, Sun was executed in February 2020. 　

Law experts partly attribute these cases to China’s two regulations on the implementation of medical parole passed in 1990. The regulations laid out the conditions of eligibility for medical parole, such as terminal disease, severe chronic illness and advanced age, and limited its application to lesser offenses, which experts say was outdated and did not address more recent trends in criminal activity. 　

Although the regulations were replaced by the 2014 regulation on temporary probation which combined and partly updated the 1990 regulations, experts find it still places too much power in the hands of prisons and not enough with supervision authorities. For example, prisons must provide medical and approval documentation to authorities, but there are no specific details on supervision or monitoring of medical parole cases. 　

“Zhimian fuxing cases have rung the alarm that we should increase punishments for illegal parole and improve institutions and systems to plug all potential loopholes,” read a China Central Television (CCTV) commentary about Wang Yunhong’s case published on its website on September 17.