Ding Yu faces yet another murderer, as her show faces yet more massive ratings.

What’s hot on TV in China’s Henan Province these days? Just a little show where death row inmates are interviewed moments before they are killed for their crimes. The show is called “Interview Before Execution” and it has China riveted to the tune of nearly 40 million viewers every week.

The show started airing in late 2006 on one of the thousands of state-run provincial TV channels in China. Every week since then, anchor Ding Yu and her team scour the court reports to find suitable candidates for their programme.

The aim, the programme-makers say, is to find cases that will serve as a warning to others. The slogan at the top of every programme calls for human nature to awaken and “perceive the value of life”.

Most of the inmates that are interviewed have been found guilty of extremely violent crimes: a gay man who murdered his mother and defiled her dead body, criminals who kidnapped a young girl for ransom and then killed her when the family could not afford to pay her ransom, and a woman who stabbed her husband to death after having been abused for years by the man.

The interviews are face-to-face encounters with prisoners sitting opposite Ding in handcuffs and leg chains. The interviews typically begin in a lighter mood with questions about the subject’s favourite music, movies and other things they enjoy, then gradually moves on to more serious questions about details of the subject’s crime.

The prisoners are usually led off to their execution as soon as the interview ends.

The interviews usually end with the condemned prisoner making an apology and delivering a farewell message. Then he/she is led away to die either by firing squad or lethal injection. Ding typically promises to deliver the prisoners’ messages to their families, many of whom are not allowed to visit their condemned relatives on death row.

Ms. Yu has been made a celebrity on the back of her show’s success, and she is often referred to as “Beauty with the Beasts”. She has this to say about meeting so many men and women facing the end of their lives for their crimes;

I feel sorry and regretful for them. But I don’t sympathise with them, for they should pay a heavy price for their wrongdoing. They deserve it.

Both the BBC and the PBS network in the States have prepared documentaries on Ding and her controversial show, which will be aired in Britain and America this month. There are over 50 crimes that warrant the death penalty in China, a country that apparently tops the world rankings in capital punishment, though no official numbers have ever been released.

[Source: BBC News]