The number of people killed in 2022 increased by more than fifty percent by decision of the states to which they belong, according to the annual report now released by Amnesty International (AI).
EITHER The total number of executions the AI recorded was 883 (one 53% increase compared to 2021), but at this value, thousands of executions believed to have been carried out in China not included. Even so, the number of executions registered in 2022 reached the highest value in the last five years.
The main executing country in 2022 in terms of the number of executions carried out in its own territory in 2022 was the People’s Republic of China (+1000 executions), but according to Amnesty it is a “value much lower than the real one, from the Amnesty International does not have access to official data, as these are classified as state secrets.”.
In contrast, in Iran 576 people were executed. “In a desperate attempt to put an end to the popular uprising, Iran has executed people simply for exercising their right to protest.”said Agnès Callamard, AI Secretary General.
Another relevant fact: “81 people were executed in a single day in Saudi Arabia.” Of these two now less rivals, neither comes out well in the photograph. From one year to the next, executions nearly doubled in Iran and tripled in Saudi Arabia.
In the Middle East and North Africa, countries violated international law by stepping up executions: in this region, the number of registrations rose from 520 in 2021 to 825 last year. Amnesty considers “Worrying is the fact that 90% of known executions worldwide, outside of China, were carried out by just three countries in the region. Saudi Arabia, from 65 in 2021 to 196 in 2022 – the highest number recorded by Amnesty in 30 years – while Egypt executed 24 people.”.
Twenty countries are known to have carried out executions, and five have resumed executions in 2022: Afghanistan, Kuwait, Myanmar, Palestine and Singapore.
The application of the death penalty was maintained “shrouded in secrecy in several countries, including China, North Korea and Vietnam, countries known to use the death penalty extensively, meaning the true global death toll is much higher.” After China, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Egypt and the United States of America are the ones that execute the most people.
Drug-related executions violate international human rights law, which states that executions should only be carried out for those “most serious crimes” – this is, “crimes involving intentional killings. These executions were recorded in China, Saudi Arabia (57), Iran (255) and Singapore (11), and accounted for 37% of all executions recorded worldwide by the organization. It is likely that executions for drug-related crimes have been carried out in Vietnam, but these figures remain, here too, a state secret.”.
signs of hope
In a gloomy environment, there was a “ray of hope for Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic which have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while Equatorial Guinea and Zambia have abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes only.”
Agnès Callamard affirms that “It is time for governments and the UN to increase the pressure on those responsible for these gross violations of human rights and ensure that international safeguards are in place”. Although executions increased, the total number of recorded death sentences imposed on individuals remained largely the same, “with a slight decrease from 2052 in 2021 to 2016 in 2022.”
As of December 2022, 112 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, and nine countries have abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes only. AI understands that the “The positive momentum continued as Liberia and Ghana took legislative steps to abolish the death penalty, while the authorities in Sri Lanka and the Maldives declared that they would not resort to the death penalty.” forBills for the government were also introduced in the Malaysian parliament. “Abolish the mandatory death penalty. While many countries continue to consign the death penalty to the dustbin of history, it is time for others to do the same.”
125 UN member states, more than ever, call for a moratorium on executions. Perhaps that is why Amnesty International says that it never had such hope in “that this abominable punishment can and will be consigned to the annals of history”; that is, this denunciation campaign will continue, “until the death penalty is abolished throughout the world.”
Source: TSF
