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China is No. 1 in executions, Amnesty says

China executed more people than any other country in the world last year by putting at least 470 people to death, but the number of executions in the country actually fell compared with the year before, Amnesty International said.

In its annual report on worldwide executions, the human-rights group said yesterday that Iran remains the country with the second-highest number of executions, and that the number had nearly doubled from the year before. The 377 inmates included a man stoned to death for committing adultery.

The US was fifth in the rankings with 42 executions, reflecting a drop in the number of people put to death during the year. That was the lowest number of executions in the US in about 15 years, Amnesty officials said.

However, lethal injection executions have been on hold nationally while the US Supreme Court considers a challenge in a case from Kentucky.

Amnesty analysts said China reformed the way capital cases are handled early last year, leading to a substantial reduction in executions. But they cautioned that the actual number of people put to death in China last year is undoubtedly higher than the figure of 470 executions that could be confirmed —- and they warned that the drop may be temporary.

“We do actually believe there has been a reduction in number of executions,” said Piers Bannister, an Amnesty researcher. “But how permanent and how significant that reduction is we don’t know because it’s a state secret.”

One reason the number of people reported executed in China fell may be the reintroduction in January last year of a review by its top court of all capital cases, Amnesty said. The legislation is aimed at weeding out unfair convictions and reserving the death penalty for only the most severe cases.

But analysts are concerned the number could rise again because of a backlog in executions due to the extra set of judicial reviews. This makes them cautious about judging the significance of the halving of the number of people killed by the Chinese state.

China defended its use of the death penalty yesterday. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu (姜瑜) said China had no plans to scrap the death penalty.

In its report, Amnesty also “expressed deep concern” that many more people were killed secretly in countries such as Mongolia, Vietnam and Malaysia.

It urged countries to heed a UN resolution last December calling for the open and transparent use of the death penalty as a step toward abolishing it altogether.

China also topped Amnesty’s list for death sentences handed down last year, with 1,860 sentenced. In all, at least 3,347 people were sentenced to death in 51 countries, and as many as 27,500 people are estimated to be on death row, the group said.

Meanwhile, human-rights abuse are intensifying in China as the Beijing Olympics near, Amnesty International head Irene Khan said yesterday while stopping short of supporting calls for a boycott of the games.

“We’ve seen human-rights abuses intensifying in the lead-up to the Olympics, [with] a crackdown on activists and the use of re-education labor camps in lieu of detention,” Khan said in Brussels.
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