BEIJING - China will step up punishment for crimes of refusing to comply with judgments and rulings, one of the measures taken by the country's top procuratorate to promote impartial law enforcement and administration of justice.

According to the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP), efforts will be made to improve the national enforcement system and explore ways to strengthen the whole-process supervision of enforcement activities.

It called for attaching equal importance to punishing crimes and protecting human rights, and strengthening supervision of the entire process of criminal filing, investigation, trial, and execution.

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Highlighting the need to ensure the provision of legal defense in all criminal cases, the SPP urged strengthening the protection of lawyers' rights in their practice.

It also stressed identifying the entry point for the reform and development of public interest litigation procuratorial services. 

New progress 

Procuratorates across China enhanced judicial protection in various fields concerning people's well-being in the first half of the year, making new progress in protecting personal information and addressing criminal behavior in the food and drug industries.

According to data from procuratorial authorities, in the first half of the year, China's prosecutorial organs indicted 4,918 individuals involved in unlawful activities including the production and sale of toxic and harmful food, as well as counterfeit and substandard drugs.

Prosecutorial organs carried out public interest litigation work related to new business formats such as community group buying, online marketing and live streaming of food and drugs, handling 14,000 cases of public interest litigation in this regard.

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Procuratorial organs initiated prosecutions against 3,136 individuals for abuse of personal information and initiated 2,615 public interest litigations in this regard in the first half of the year.

To safeguard the rights and interests of workers, procuratorates indicted 571 individuals for deliberately not paying work remuneration with over 71 million yuan (US$9.96 million) of wages claimed back.

In the first six months, procuratorial organs handled 959 public interest litigations related to women's rights and interests, notably equal employment and special rights for female employees.

To address crimes against minors, procuratorial organs indicted 33,000 individuals during the same time period.