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China Turned the Moments Before a Drug Lord's Execution into a TV Special

It's a case that feels as modern as it is dreadful.

It's a case that feels as modern as it is dreadful: A quartet of men, convicted and sentenced to execution in a country that isn't their own–after government officials previously discussed killing them via a drone strike–are shown on live TV walking to their death. But while that sounds like some not-so-bizarro version of the United States, it actually took place in China.

The story reaches all the way back to October, 2011, when 13 blindfolded bodies were uncovered in the Mekong river in northern Thailand. They were all Chinese nationals, and were found to be the crews from a pair of vessels hijacked by what turned out to be a Burmese drug lord. Last year, that kingpin, named Naw Kham, and five accomplices were arrested by Chinese officials, and all were sentenced to death. While two received suspended death sentences, Kham and three associates–one Thai, one Lao, and one listed only as "stateless"–were executed last Friday.

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The case is fascinating enough as an exercise in international politics. Following a number of hijackings in what's known as the Golden Triangle–a region where China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet, one which is lawless and run by the opium and heroin trade–armed patrols were set up along the Mekong. While the patrols are ostensibly multinational, the program is run by the Chinese, and when Kham was arrested in Laos, he was extradited to China.

English-language Chinese newspaper Global Times headlined an article about the death sentences "Naw Kham’s sentence a milestone for safety of Chinese." Meanwhile, the Economist said "the whole affair is also a milestone in the extension of Chinese power beyond its borders." (There is also the added wrinkle of China's apparent discussion of the use of an unmanned aircraft carrying 20 kilograms of TNT to kill Kham and crew, although that plan never happened.)

But perhaps even more fascinating–and certainly more macabre–is how the entire case was televised live. Now, live broadcasts of a major verdict are nothing new, but it does all feel rather theatrical.

But the above hardly compares to the live broadcast on execution day, a two-hour broadcast which followed the four men all the way up to the point that they were led to a van that drove them to their death chamber, while photographers squeezed off a few last shots. (Apparently the van wasn't one of China's notorious execution vans.)

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That the execution played out like a reality show–one with a rather transparent theme of state control–was particularly polarizing. To be sure, Kham was a hated figure for many Chinese (the Global Times compared the hunt for him to that of Osama bin Laden), and his death was seen by some as a matter of justice. Some people were vocally supportive of the execution, especially over social media. But others went online to decry the way the execution was presented.

“Rather than showcasing rule of law, the program displayed state control over human life in a manner designed to attract gawkers,” Han Youyi, a criminal law professor, wrote on a microblog post picked up by the New York Times. “State-administered violence is no loftier than criminal violence.”

The in-your-face reality of men being whisked away to almost immediate death aside, the entire show was packaged without any of the gravitas that's expected of any high-profile killing. While Obama was heavily criticized, especially by conservatives, for allegedly spiking the football over bin Laden's death, the execution of Kham was delivered with outright pageantry. From the LA Times:

At one point, the television broadcast cut away to show a gala-style award ceremony complete with patriotic music and small children carrying bouquets for the investigators who had worked on capturing the drug traffickers.

Chinese television also broadcast a chilling interview with Naw Kham taped earlier this week in which he said, 'I am afraid of death. I want to live. I don't want to die. I have children. I am afraid."

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Even in reality TV-addled America, where every snippets of disasters and meltdowns are packaged neatly for YouTube and myriad prison reality shows portray the incarcerated as little more than cunning animals, the Kham television special feels like a step beyond. In China, however, the two-hour special isn't much of a leap for a country that already featured an interview show that took place right before prisoners were set to be executed, and which ran for six years.

Perhaps the comparison to bin Laden is apropos, but not how the Global Times meant it. While photos of a dead bin Laden were never released, Zero Dark Thirty and other accounts detailed the long hand of American justice in dramatized detail; in China, the state was loudly celebrating the moment it got to notch its belt.

The justness of the killings is immaterial, it's the presentation that's up for discussion. It's true that we humans have long reveled in the spectacle of execution. It's also true that there's nothing new about the drama of the courtroom making for powerful television, and conversely, that that television can produce plenty of drama on its own, as evidenced best by the Los Angeles riots in 1992.

Does more have to be next logical step for television? To turn the execution of a reviled character into a circus is one thing. But is that now the norm for the many (perhaps thousands) that China executes each year? When will such a spectacle, which surely brought in a boatload of viewers, happen in the equally execution-happy US? It's a strange thought, to be sure. But what's most strange is that it doesn't seem implausible.

@derektmead