Amnesty International: Number of executions at record high

Status: 05/16/2023 02:01 a.m

Amnesty International has counted as many executions in the past year as it did in 2017 – most of them in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Unofficially, however, China leads the list.

According to the human rights organization Amnesty International, the number of executions reached a new high in the past year. According to their own statements, at least 883 executions in 20 countries have been documented for 2022. This is the highest number of judicial executions since 2017, according to the report on the global use of the death penalty.

The increase is mainly due to executions in the Middle East and North Africa. 90 percent of the executions recorded worldwide took place in just three countries – Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

More than 570 documented cases in Iran

The report documented at least 576 executions in Iran alone. “The Iranian leadership is responsible for 65 percent of the executions that became known worldwide last year,” said Julia Duchrow, Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International in Germany. In the course of the suppression of the protests after the death of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, at least four people were executed and numerous others were threatened with the death penalty.

Among them is German citizen Jamshid Sharmahd, whose death sentence was upheld by the country’s Supreme Court on April 26. According to Duchrow, the UN assumes that at least 209 people have already been executed in Iran this year.

Thousands of unofficial executions suspected in China

In Saudi Arabia, the number tripled from 65 (2021) to 196 (2022). 81 people were executed there in a single day. According to reports, 24 people were executed in Egypt. In addition, Amnesty International assumes that thousands more executions have gone unrecorded.

According to Amnesty, the highest number of executions take place in China – but they are not officially confirmed by the Chinese authorities. Although the exact number is not known, Amnesty assumes that thousands of executions are carried out each year. This puts China far ahead of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the USA. According to the human rights organization, executions in North Korea and Vietnam are also not made public.

According to Amnesty International, the number of executions in the USA rose from 11 to 18. In Afghanistan, Kuwait, Myanmar, the Gaza Strip and Singapore, death sentences were carried out again after interruptions.

The number of executions for drug-related offenses has more than doubled since the previous year. According to the information, 255 people were executed in Iran alone, 57 in Saudi Arabia and 11 in Singapore.

Authoritarian regimes in particular are increasingly using the death penalty to suppress freedom of expression.
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Death Penalty Countries Increasingly ‘Isolated Minority’

On the other hand, according to the report, increasing numbers of countries are also abandoning the death penalty. Six countries have completely or partially abolished them in the past year: Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic for all crimes, Equatorial Guinea and Zambia only for common crimes. Liberia and Ghana initiated legal action to abolish the death penalty.

“The world has undoubtedly moved further away from the death penalty as a means of punishment in 2022,” said German Amnesty Secretary-General Duchrow. “The countries responsible for the most executions worldwide – China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Vietnam – are now clearly in an isolated minority with their brutal actions.”

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