Report Says Executions Doubled in 2008

The number of executions worldwide nearly doubled last year compared to 2007, according to Amnesty International, and China put to death far more people than any other nation.

Amnesty International: Death Sentences and Executions in 2008 in Asian countries accounted for more executions than the rest of the world put together, the rights group said Tuesday in its annual report on the death penalty.

The group chronicled beheadings in Saudi Arabia; hangings in Japan, Iraq, Singapore and Sudan; lethal injections in China; an electrocution in the United States; firing squads in Afghanistan, Belarus and Vietnam; and stonings in Iran.

In all, 59 countries still have the death penalty on their books, but only 25 carried out executions last year. Two nations, Uzbekistan and Argentina, banned the death penalty last year. Amnesty said at least 2,390 people were executed worldwide in 2008, compared to its 2007 figure of at least 1,252.

With at least 1,718, China was responsible for 72 % of all executions in 2008, the report stated. After China were Iran (346), Saudi Arabia (102), the United States (37) and Pakistan (36), according to the group.

"Together they carried out 93 % of all executions worldwide," the report said.

Chinese authorities also handed down at least 7,003 new death sentences last year, although the report said the true total of both executions and death sentences "remains shrouded in secrecy." Some countries, China and North Korea among them, do not disclose the number of executions they carry out.

In China's case, "real figures are undoubtedly higher," the report stated.

Although admittedly incomplete, the figures from Amnesty International are widely accepted as authoritative. The United States State Department, for example, cited the group's statistics and findings in its recent report on human rights.

Amnesty International, which has long opposed the death penalty, said Europe and Central Asia have become "virtually a death-penalty-free zone" with only Belarus, the former Soviet republic, continuing to execute prisoners.

"In the Americas, only 1 state the United States consistently executes," the group said, noting that the number of U.S. executions last year, 37, was the lowest since 1994.

Source: New York Times, March 25, 2009