Even joking about putting anthrax powder in a letter can lead to a five-year prison term under a new amendment to China's Criminal Law.
According to the draft amendment, which was tabled at a session of the country's legislature National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee Monday morning, any person who makes a false threat of terrorism in the form of an explosion, bio-chemical agents or radiation, or seriously disturbs social order by knowingly disseminating terrorist information of a fabricated nature will be punished with a maximum imprisonment of five years.
The punishment is also applicable to those who deploy materials that are falsely represented to be of an explosive, poisonous, radioactive or organically infectious nature.
In a case that took place in Shanghai in east China recently, Xiao Yongling was sentenced to four years imprisonment for sending a mail he claimed contained anthrax bacteria.
Briefing the 25th session of China's National People's Congress Standing Committee on the third amendment, Hu Kangsheng, deputy director of the Commission of Legislative Affairs of the NPC Standing Committee, said in view of the new terrorist practice of spreading anthrax bacteria through the mail, the amendment stipulates that those who commit crimes like spreading poisonous, radioactive or contagious materials will be sentenced to three or more years of imprisonment or even the death penalty.
The present Criminal Law rules that those who organize, direct or participate in terrorist activities will be sentenced to three to ten years of imprisonment.
Hu said the amendment draft stipulates that those who organize or direct terrorist activities will be sentenced to ten or more years' of imprisonment or life imprisonment, those who actively participate in such crimes will be sentenced to three to ten years,and other participants will get less than three years, or just detention or custody.
Those who sponsor terrorism will be sentenced to five or more years and their property will be confiscated.
Those who manufacture, trade, transport, store, steal, rob poisonous, radioactive or contagious materials will be sentenced to three or more years and may receive the death penalty.
(Xinhua News Agency December 24, 2001)
