Although the number of executions declined worldwide last year, China remained the world’s top executioner with more than 1,000 deaths, while Saudi Arabia executed 184 people, its highest in the past few years, Amnesty International Taiwan executive director Chiu Ee-ling (邱伊翎) said yesterday.
“A total of 20 countries carried out the death penalty in 2019. Seven of those countries are in the Asia-Pacific region. Overall, the worldwide total that we can [officially] confirm came to 657 people executed last year, a reduction of about 5 percent from 2018,” she told a news conference in Taipei as she presented the Chinese-language version of Amnesty International’s Death Sentences and Executions 2019 report.
“Taiwan did not have any executions last year, but it is unfortunate that we had two court rulings handing out the death penalty. Also, two inmates on death row died last year — one due to illness, while the other committed suicide,” she added.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
Amnesty International’s adviser on the death penalty Chiara Sangiorgio said via video link-up that China was the country with the highest number of executions.
Although China keeps its execution numbers a state secret and does not release them to the outside world, the group was able to obtain the information that executions last year topped 1,000, she said.
Many countries, including China and North Korea, carried out the death penalty without transparency, so the organization was left with the task of verifying the exact figures, she added.
Following China, the four countries with the highest number of executions were Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt, the report said.
Only 13 countries had performed executions in each of the past five years, which shows that countries that carry out the death penalty are becoming a small minority, it said.
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