China Sentences 3 to Death for Tourist Murders

Hoping to placate an angry Taiwanese public, a Chinese court handed down death sentences Sunday to three men convicted of robbing and killing 24 Taiwanese tourists and eight mainlanders.

The killings had provoked the worst crisis in China-Taiwan relations since the two opened trade and tourism links in 1987.

For many Taiwanese, the case dramatized the gap in legal and political systems between their increasingly democratic and open society and the still-secretive Communist-ruled mainland.

Taiwan is a Chinese province but has been politically separated from the rest of the country since the Nationalist Chinese government took haven there in 1949 after being ousted by the Communists on the mainland.

The official New China News Agency quoted the court as saying the “facts of the crimes were clear, and the evidence was complete.”

But in Taiwan, relatives of the victims called the verdict a sham and said they believed that the killers are still at large.

The Taiwanese tourists were taking a cruise on Thousand Islands Lake in eastern Zhejiang province when they and the crew were killed. Police found the bodies in the cabin of the boat, which was badly charred, and initially claimed that they were victims of an accidental fire.

Only after an outcry from Taiwan and a boycott by Taiwanese travel agencies did mainland police acknowledge that the group had been robbed and murdered.