Beijing offers tour of interrogation room in anti-corruption education

BEIJING, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- In their latest piece of anti-corruption education, Beijing prosecutors opened Tuesday to the public their interrogation rooms where suspected corrupt officials are questioned.

After going through a fingerprint ID door, dozens of ordinary citizens found themselves in one of the six interrogation rooms, tucked underground in the building of the People's Procurorate in Dongcheng District of Beijing.

It is a 10-square-meter room with an armchair, an LCD indicator that tells the date, time, temperature and humidity, and a glass wall through which officials under investigation and prosecutors face each other.

"To offer a relatively comfortable environment for the questionees is a sign of humanity," said Lou Yunsheng, chief prosecutor of the procurorate.

"We cover the wall with leather and turn down the electricity to 12 volts in case the suspects hurt themselves during the interrogation," Lou added.

On the third floor of the same building, visitors were also shown a room where prosecutors monitor and videotape interrogations to prevent "forced confessions".

Faced with an increasing number of corruption cases, Chinese authorities had used various ways to plant the idea of anti-corruption in the public mind.

In the most notorious corruption case in China in recent years, Chen Liangyu, Shanghai's former Communist Party chief, was sacked last year from his post for his implication in the Shanghai social security fund scandal. He was also expelled from the Party and is awaiting further punishment.

In April, the Beijing Procuratorate organized an anti-corruption exhibition where photos of corrupt officials' wives were shown alongside their convicted husbands.

"The spouses of government officials are also the targets of people offering bribes. Our fight against corruption will focus not only on officials but also on their spouses," said Li Qiang, a procurator of the Beijing Procuratorate.