A Canadian man is set to join hundreds of shackled inmates on China’s degrading death row as they await agonising lethal injections or firing squads. Robert Schellenberg, believed to be 38, from Abbotsford, British Columbia, was detained by the Chinese authorities for drug smuggling and after a retrial he had been condemned to die. Robert Schellenberg is now on death row in China where doom-ed inmates are caged in humiliating conditions.
Hundreds of Chinese citizens are handed the death penalty each year – more than the rest of the world combinedCredit: AFP A ‘cell trustee’ removes shoes of a prisoner before she is taken away to be killedCredit: chinasmack.com
Schellenberg, who maintains his innocence, has been locked up in China since 2014, when he was accused of attempting to smuggle 225kg of methamphetamine to Australia. In December 2018 he was sentenced to 15 years but after he appealed a retrial was ordered and the Dalian intermediate people’s court instead ordered his execution.
It comes as human rights organisation Amnesty Inter-national has branded China the world’s top executioner.
Schellenberg and others facing death are sent to detention centres where they await their fate on death row in tiny overcrowded cells or in solitary confinement. According to the blog Dui Hua, those on death row wait just two months before being put to death compared to an average of 15 years in the United States.
It says the doomed prisoners are degraded by being shackled at all times by their hands and feet.
Cell trustees help them to eat and go to the toilet and strip them ready for execution after which the chains are removed and cleaned.
Firing squads and lethal injections are two favourite methods of the death penalty used by China.