Source: Procuratorate Daily
In December 2023, the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued the "Circular on Commending and Implementing the Guiding Opinions of the "Two Supreme People's Courts and Two Ministries" and Promoting the Resolution of 100 Outstanding Procuratorial Supervision Cases on the Issue of Marriage Registration by Impersonation or Fraud", and 4 cases handled by the Jinghong City Procuratorate of Yunnan Province, the Jiangchuan District Procuratorate of Yuxi City, the Kunming City Procuratorate, and the Dongchuan District Procuratorate of Kunming City were selected as excellent procuratorial supervision cases.
In November 2021, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Civil Affairs jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Properly Handling Issues Concerning the Handling of Marriage Registration by Impersonation or Fraud (hereinafter referred to as the "Guiding Opinions"), which provides institutional guidelines for the substantive resolution of administrative disputes in the field of marriage registration. Over the past two years, the Yunnan Provincial Procuratorate has thoroughly implemented Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law, adhered to the people-centered, actively performed its duties in accordance with the law, and substantively resolved administrative disputes throughout the case, not only resolving the reasonable demands of the parties and eliminating the "stock", but also supervising the administrative organs to standardize the order of marriage registration and avoid "increments", and also urged the administrative organs to resolutely punish perpetrators with serious violations of the law and strengthen warning education. Up to now, a total of 118 cases of administrative procuratorial supervision in the field of marriage registration have been accepted, 82 procuratorial suggestions have been issued to administrative organs, and 79 cases have been revoked or changed by administrative organs, effectively helping the parties to untie the "inseparable marriage".
Adhere to integrity and innovation, and gather the joint force to resolve disputes. The first is to establish and improve the coordination mechanism to break through the difficulties and blockages in the supply of the system. Strengthen coordination and cooperation with courts and administrative organs to achieve case information exchange, resource sharing, and diversified dispute resolution. In December 2022, the Yunnan Provincial Procuratorate, together with the Provincial High Court, the Provincial Public Security Department, and the Provincial Department of Civil Affairs, issued the Notice on Properly Handling the Issue of Marriage Registration by Impersonation or Fraud, clarifying the specific operational rules. In July 2023, the Yunnan Provincial Procuratorate focused on reporting on the effectiveness of the province's handling of marriage registration procuratorial supervision cases by impersonation or fraud in a special report to the Standing Committee of the Yunnan Provincial People's Congress, and accepted special inquiries, which was affirmed and supported by the Provincial People's Congress. Many regional procuratorates and civil affairs departments have jointly formulated special supervision work plans, establishing good coordination mechanisms such as the transfer of leads, case consultations, legal popularization and publicity, and coordination and cooperation, to unite and resolve disputes.
The second is to explore innovative jurisdictional models and give full play to territorial advantages to practice the "Fengqiao experience". Yunnan Province is located in a border area, with a large mountainous area, and the cost of handling cases is high. Since the courts launched the pilot work on centralized jurisdiction over administrative cases, the corresponding procuratorates of the courts with centralized jurisdiction have insufficient personnel to cope with the heavy task of resolving disputes, and the local procuratorates have seen a situation where there are few sources of cases and "no cases to handle", and the distribution of case-handling forces is uneven. Based on the above predicament, the local procuratorates in Yunnan actively practiced the "Fengqiao experience" in the new era, and reported the cases to the provincial procuratorate in accordance with the actual conditions of the local economy, region, and social stability, and the provincial procuratorate designated jurisdiction in accordance with the "Rules for the Supervision of Administrative Litigation of the People's Procuratorate", giving full play to the advantages of the territorial procuratorate in handling cases, effectively preventing the intensification of contradictions, and realizing the on-the-spot resolution of contradictions and disputes. The Kunming Centralized Jurisdiction District Procuratorate and the Kunming Railway Transport Court jointly issued a document on strengthening coordination and cooperation to promote the substantive resolution of administrative disputes, further deepening the positive interaction between the trial and the procuratorate, and improving and optimizing the case-handling mechanism.
The third is to expand the sources of clues, from "sitting in the court to ask the case" to "taking the initiative to go to the clinic". Since 2023, the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government have deployed and carried out the special action of "popularizing the law to strengthen the foundation and make up for the shortcomings", and procuratorial organs at all levels have taken legal popularization publicity as an important measure to unblock the source of clues based on local conditions. Some local procuratorates have combined the "Civil and Administrative Procuratorate Publicity Month" and "Yuanba Meeting" and other legal publicity activities to send the law into villages, communities, markets, enterprises, and organs, and use real cases around the masses to guide more impostors to apply for supervision. The applicants, Li and Lei, learned about the relevant cases handled by the Dongchuan District Procuratorate of Kunming City from media reports, and then applied to the procuratorate for supervision.
Consolidate the evidence base and ensure that procuratorial supervision achieves practical results. The first is to strengthen integrated case handling and optimize the allocation of resources. It is difficult to resolve administrative disputes arising from marriage registration by impersonation or fraud in accordance with current laws, but the parties' demands for "freedom of marriage" are reasonable, and it is difficult to successfully resolve administrative disputes by relying solely on the grassroots procuratorate that undertakes the case. To this end, on the one hand, the procuratorial organs of Yunnan Province have strengthened the interconnection and interaction between the procuratorates at the lower and lower levels, and made joint efforts to quickly mobilize and integrate procuratorial and case-handling resources to efficiently promote the development of work; on the other hand, they have adopted methods such as horizontal linkage, cross-regional investigation, questioning of the parties, and holding hearings to comprehensively investigate the true identities of the parties and the causes of marriage registration errors, so as to ensure that the evidence is solid and solid. For example, the Menglian County Procuratorate and the Gao County Procuratorate of Sichuan Province carried out horizontal and cross-regional linkage, and urged the civil affairs department to revoke the erroneous marriage registration through the formulation and issuance of procuratorial recommendations, clarifying the marriage relationship of three women living in Myanmar, Sichuan, and Menglian.
The second is to cultivate typical cases and handle each case with high quality and efficiency. Through centralized collection, cross-selection, review and revision by the state and municipal procuratorates, 8 typical cases of administrative procuratorial supervision in the field of marriage registration of the province's procuratorial organs were selected and issued. Under the strong guidance of higher-level procuratorates and the guidance and demonstration of typical cases, grassroots procuratorates that had a weak foundation for handling cases in the past have also achieved new breakthroughs. For example, the Changning County Procuratorate has only 38 prosecutors, and after learning typical cases, they successfully handled one case, and made the case story into a short film "Twists and Turns of the Divorce Case", which has won praise from many parties. Another example, after studying typical cases, the Longchuan County Procuratorate not only successfully handled five cases and helped applicants revoke the registration of impersonated marriages, but also urged the civil affairs departments to inform their rights and obligations in four languages, including Jingpo, Dai, Chinese, and Burmese, in combination with the characteristics of border regions, in the registration hall, and put an end to improper marriage registration.
The third is to strengthen the connection between executions and promote the management of litigation sources. In response to the problem of handling marriage registration by impersonation or fraud, the grassroots procuratorates in Yunnan have actively cooperated with local civil affairs departments to build an "administrative + procuratorial" platform to actively consult and exchange information on the prevention, punishment and correction of illegal acts in marriage registration, and continuously improve and perfect work measures. In the past two years, after discovering clues on criminal offenses in the course of handling cases, the procuratorial organs of the province have transferred a total of seven cases to the public security organs for handling, and have urged the administrative organs to carry out credit punishments on four offenders in accordance with the "Memorandum of Cooperation on Carrying Out Joint Disciplinary Action against Seriously Untrustworthy Parties in Marriage Registration."
(Author's Affiliation: Yunnan Provincial People's Procuratorate)