The reply from the Finance Department of Henan said that it had no obligation to publish the details of the compensation for Zhao Zuohai's case.

"Ordinary taxpayers have no obligations to pay the bill on behalf of negligent officials. That's why I decided to press the related authorities to publish the details of how the compensation had been sourced for the three cases," Lin noted. He said that he will not give up and will continue to press the departments concerned till they give him adequate replies.

Tightening the rules

According to the State Compensation Law, compensation funds are included in the fiscal budgets of the governments at all levels.

State compensation is a big expense. In 2012, the total volume of judicial compensation cases settled nationwide approached 61 million yuan ($9.77 million) and that of administrative compensation cases exceeded 127 million yuan ($20.35 million).

Zhou Qiang, President of the Supreme People's Court, China's highest judicial body, revealed that courts nationwide closed 2,045 cases of seeking state compensation involving more than 87.35 million yuan ($13.99 million) . He made the statements at this year's full session of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, which was held in March.

However, there has been no report about the sources for the compensation. "We don't know where the money came from and if the persons responsible for the case have been made to pay any of the compensation at all," Lin said.

Experts believe a prerequisite for compensation sourcing is an accountability mechanism. This could be carried out through confirmation from the liable parties that the compensation can be recovered from them, they suggest.

However, there are few open cases of persons responsible for wrongful convictions being held accountable, not to mention the obtaining of compensation from them. According to Beijing Times, the punishments for liable parties are often limited to administrative or Party disciplinary sanctions and there has been no report about individual cases of compensation being paid by responsible parties.

In Zhao Zuohai's case, five of the six police officers who were involved in torturing Zhao into falsely admitting to murder, which led to him spending 11 years in jail, were sentenced to prison terms in 2012.

Prosecutors said that Zhao was tortured for 33 days during which he was beaten with clubs and threatened with a pistol in his mouth. The officers also prevented him from sleeping and set off firecrackers on his head.

Zhao was released in May 2010 after the man he was accused of having killed turned up alive.

"I haven't heard anything about compensation coming from those responsible," Zhao admitted to Beijing Times on May 11.

To solve the problem, Jiang Ming'an, a professor at the Law School of Peking University, emphasized improving the efficiency of monitoring by people's congresses at all levels and supervisory departments. Jiang also suggested perfecting compensation recovery and supervisory procedures on a legal basis. He gave time limits for compensation recovery being written into relevant regulations as an example.

Ying Songnian, a tenured professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, insisted that all state compensation cases should be made public so as to receive supervision from society and the general populace. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant," Ying said.

Email us at: yinpumin@bjreview.com

The State Compensation Law

According to the amended State Compensation Law, when a citizen is harmed through state negligence, the state must pay them compensation. The previous law, however, stipulated that state compensation would only be granted when state organs violate the law, excluding cases of negligence.

The new law also includes compensation for psychological injury.

In line with the law, the amount of compensation for the violation of personal liberty is calculated based on China's average daily salary.

On May 28, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the country's top prosecuting department, increased the compensation standard to 200.69 yuan ($32.15) per day, an increase of 18.34 yuan ($2.94) from 2013.

In 2013, the annual per-capita salary for urban residents in non-private sectors was 51,474 yuan ($8,246.13), equivalent to 205.89 yuan ($33.01) a day, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed on May 27.

In 2011, the Supreme People's Court established a regulation that stipulates that state organs will be obligated to prove the lawfulness of specific practices for which they have been asked to pay compensation.

The court also unveiled a judicial interpretation in 2012, which simplified procedures for eligible compensation claimants to file lawsuits.

The 11-article document requires courts to date claimants' applications and forgo lengthy application standards in a bid to ensure the cases are handled in a timely fashion.

The move will further standardize the trial procedures for state compensation cases, as well as better safeguard the rights of claimants who faced difficulty in collecting evidence against the responsible state organs in the past, said the court.

(Compiled by Beijing Review)