国内英语新闻:China's campaign to solve lawsuit-related public petitions pays off

BEIJING, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- China's efforts to deal with lawsuit-related public petitions have seen positive results with 616 such cases being resolved as of the end of October, figures from the Ministry of Justice show.

Since March, when a campaign to manage cases of public petitions and complaints began, judicial and administrative departments across the country have dealt with 6,501 lawsuit-related petition cases.

"In order to avoid lawsuit-related public petitions from the root, prisons and detention centers across the country have launched training programs for prison police to promote their management and law enforcement capacities," Vice Minister Hao Chiyong said Wednesday at a meeting.

In China, many public petitions and complaints involved mistreatment of prisoners in detention centers as police sought confessions by allegedly torturing detainees.

"Through these efforts, the number of lawsuit-related petition cases have dropped significantly," Hao said.

In addition to police training, local governments were told to carefully consider and check corruption-prone cases and those strongly felt by the public, and deal with these cases in accordance with laws and regulations.

According to Hao, the ministry is planning to let mediation play a larger role in solving public conflicts and complaints by organizing legal workers to provide legal aid and guide people to express their demands in a reasonable manner.

Figures released this September by the State Council Information Office show that, in 2009, the number of letters from, and visits of people for petitioning, dropped by 2.7 percent over the previous year, a decrease for the fifth consecutive year.