In China, three family members of a woman who was suffering from an autoimmune disease, were sent to jail for the crime of assisting in dying.
The woman, from Taizhou city in Zhejiang province, eastern China, had asked her son-in-law to buy rat poison to help her end the pain of her illness. The lady then swallowed the poison with her husband, daughter and son-in-law, gathered around her bed to bid her a tearful farewell.
The Chinese judge decided to send the family to jail in order to send a string signal: “If the defendant is given a mild penalty, society might mistake it as an encouragement of such acts. If they are given a heavy penalty, it defies the spirit of prudence and kindness.”
This judgment restarted the debate in China about euthanasia.
China