AT LEAST 23 countries used the death penalty last year, some four more than the year before, according to a report out today from Amnesty International.
It says the total number of executions officially recorded last year was 527, down from 714 in 2009.
Amnesty stresses, however, that the true figures for the numbers shot, hanged, poisoned, electrocuted or beheaded around the globe last year by countries still using the death penalty is actually significantly higher because executions are often carried out in secret.
China, it says, is believed to have executed thousands of people last year but it keeps the number of people put to death a state secret. In Vietnam, publishing figures on the use of the death penalty is prohibited by law.
China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen and the US make up the top five death penalty states, accounting for the vast majority of executions. Only one country in Europe, Belarus, still carries out executions.
Amnesty International’s annual report on the death penalty for 2010 states that in such countries as Belarus, Botswana, Egypt and Japan, death row inmates are not informed of their forthcoming execution, nor are their families or lawyers. “In Belarus, Botswana and Vietnam the bodies of the executed prisoners are not returned to their families for burial.”
The report also states that more than 2,000 new death sentences were known to have been imposed in 67 countries in 2010 and at the end of 2010 at least 17,833 people were under sentence of death worldwide. At least 10 women and four men remained under sentence of death by stoning in Iran.
In the course of last year Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen imposed death sentences on individuals that were below 18 years of age when the crimes were committed.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender or the method used by the state to the kill the prisoner. The organisation began its global campaign against the death penalty in 1977. At that time only 16 countries had abolished capital punishment. Now 139 countries have abolished it in law or in practice.
The report says that in most countries where support for the death penalty is still strong, capital punishment continues to be imposed after unfair trials and often based on confessions extracted through torture. In many cases, death sentences are handed down for offences that do not meet the threshold of most serious crimes, such as witchcraft, drug-related offences or sexual relations between consenting adults, it adds.