China will promote live recordings and full videotaping of interrogations of criminals suspected of murder and gang crimes, the Ministry of Public Security announced on Tuesday.

He Ting, director of the ministry's criminal investigation department, said the measures would help bar the use of torture to extract confessions.

It will also prevent criminal suspects from revoking confessions or bringing false charges against interrogators, He told a press conference.

An increasing number of local public security bureaus in economically developed areas including Shanghai, Beijing, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Jiangsu have adopted these measures, according to He.

"It is, however, still premature for police departments across the country to implement such measures because of the gap in economic development and lack of police in the remote western areas," He noted.

The ministry has explicitly ordered the use of recording and videotaping of interrogations in the imminent national campaign on the crackdown of Mafia-like criminal groups.

The phenomena of policemen extorting confessions from criminal suspects by torture has been repeatedly exposed and reported by the Chinese media in recent years, sparking public outcry.

The Ministry launched a program to increase transparency in the public security departments on August 1 last year.

China's procurators will also dispatch special officials to public security departments to monitor the interrogation of criminal suspects in order to ensure that confessions are not extracted by torture.

Source: Xinhua