Execution of the death penalty recorded its biggest increase in five years in 2022, with 883 cases in 20 countries, the non-governmental organization (NGO) Amnesty International (AI) announced on Tuesday.
This is an increase of 52.5% compared to the 579 recorded executions in 2021, and the biggest increase since 2017, when 993 were confirmed.
China remains the country with the most executions, although the number is unknown, AI said in its annual report on the death penalty.
“The true extent of the use of the death penalty in this country [China] remains unknown as this information remains classified as a state secret,” he said.
The London-based NGO is putting the number of executions in China in the thousands.
With the exception of China, confirmed executions took place in Iran (at least 576), Saudi Arabia (196), Egypt (24) and the United States of America (18).
The NGO also confirmed executions in Iraq (at least 11), Singapore (11), Kuwait (7), Somalia (at least 6), South Sudan (at least 5), Palestine (5), Yemen (4, at least), Bangladesh (4), Myanmar (4), Belarus (1) and Japan (1).
AI also listed Afghanistan, North Korea, Syria and Vietnam as countries where executions took place, but with no information to indicate a number.
In these cases, as in China, the NGO counts two executions for the global calculations, so the total is 883 last year.
In 2022, excluding China, 93% of executions will take place in the Middle East and North Africa.
The 196 executions that took place in Saudi Arabia are the highest annual number in the country in 30 years, according to AI.
The NGO recorded the execution of 13 women in 2022, 12 of them in Iran and one in Saudi Arabia.
Drug-related crimes accounted for 225 executions in Iran, 57 in Saudi Arabia and 11 in Singapore.
According to AI, “the Iranian authorities continued to use the death penalty as a tool of political repression and to disproportionately execute members of ethnic minorities”.
In 2022, there were at least two public executions in Iran and one in Afghanistan.
The methods used worldwide were beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.
The report “contains no data related to extrajudicial killings”, but only covers the judicial application of the death penalty.
Despite the increase in executions, the NGO believed that “the world has made remarkable progress towards abolition”.
By December 31, 2022, about three quarters of countries have abolished the death penalty “in law or practice”.
The death penalty does not apply in 112 countries, including Portugal, which abolished capital punishment for civil crimes in 1867.
Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Equatorial Guinea, Israel, Peru and Zambia have abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes and maintained it for exceptional crimes, although they have not used it for more than 10 years.
The NGO also counts countries that are abolishing the death penalty in practice because they have not recorded any executions in the past 10 years or more.
Account is also taken of countries that have “a policy or practice of not carrying out executions”, despite retaining the death penalty for common crimes such as murder.
These include Algeria, Brunei, Cameroon, South Korea, Eritrea, Swatini, Ghana, Grenada, Laos, Liberia, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco/Western Sahara, Niger, Kenya, Russia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Tonga and Tunisia.
More than 90 countries maintain the death penalty for common crimes, including the United States, Belarus, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Lebanon, Nigeria, Sudan, Uganda, Thailand or Zimbabwe.
Source: DN
