There was a more recent (2011) thread on the same topic, here:
Since that thread is only a month or so ago, I’m leaving it open, but asking y’all to post here instead. That is, I’m suggesting that all responses be put in THIS thread, moving forward.
–Minor thought: Cecil comments on how culture affects punishments. I’ve read a fine account of the Western powers’ (and Japanese) war with China following the Boxer Rebellion. From time to time, Westerners would be taken by Chinese troops and villagers, and a favorite trick applied was to force them to eat human excrement. This struck me as a cultural thing when I read it. I can’t say I remember anything similar from the annals of Western warfare.
–Cecil also notes “mercy” often was applied by the Chinese executioner early in the process. According to an account of executions “on the scaffold” (public torture and dismemberment) written by French social theorist Michael Foucault, in his interesting but nearly indecipherable book on the birth of the prison, 1975, similar forms of mercy were sometimes practiced by the executioner there as well (although incompetence was sometimes the real factor). In burnings at the stake, I read in some source many years ago that a bag of gunpowder was often tied around the neck of the victim/criminal for the same purpose. Usually this was done by friends or a bribed executioner.
–Today, I believe, the Chinese perform executions with a single pistol shot to the back of the head on a kneeling prisoner in some public place. Very simple and effective; very instructive to the population. They are no-nonsense about it: the total time between trial, appeals, and final execution is weeks, I think.
–The Russians used a similar technique under the Soviets, as explained in a United Nations debate many years ago by the Israeli Ambassador (speaking in English) in response to the Russian Ambassador (speaking in Russian) using the term “glova k stenye,” head-against-the-wall, in condemning as cold-blooded the mass killing of Palestinians by Israel’s Christian allies in a refugee camp. The Israeli ambassador pointed out that this was specifically a Russian method of efficient execution in its Moscow prison: making the victim/criminal lean forward with his forhead against a brick wall. A single pistol shot to the back of the head would then kill him outright without a ricochet, as the ambassador explained (making the point that the Russians had no room to talk about cold-blooded executions). The Russian ambassador angrily yelled a response at one point, but chuckled or talked to his neighbors most of the way through.
In Flashman and the Dragon, George Macdonald Fraser, whose research I respect, has a different version. Around the time of the Taiping Rebellion an Anglo-French force marched on Peking to enforce certain treaties (Second Opium War). Some British, French and Indian Army soldiers were captured and killed. The method described is that they were tightly wrapped in some sort of net or mesh. The nubbins of flesh and skin that protruded through the gaps were then randomly sliced off with a sharp knife or razor. The victim generally died of shock and blood loss. This atrocity apparently led Lord Elgin to order the destruction of the Summer Palace.