Despite the call for a moratorium on the death penalty by 125 UN member states, the number of executions carried out has risen sharply in the past year.
How informs Euronews, based on data released on Tuesday, the annual report “Amnesty International” World Death Penalty Report, 883 people were executed in 20 countries last year. This is 53% more than in the previous year 2021.
However, the highest figure in the past five years does not include unrecorded executions, mainly in the Middle East, China and North Africa. Human rights activists note that the leaders in the list of states where the death penalty is most often carried out are Iran, China and Saudi Arabia – only in one day, according to Amnesty International, 81 people were executed in the last of them. The United States ranks fifth on this list. Agnes Squid, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said:
“Countries in the Middle East and North Africa are flouting international law by speeding up executions in 2022, demonstrating a cruel disregard for human life. The number of people deprived of their lives in this way has skyrocketed in this region of the world, where Saudi Arabia has gone so far as to execute 81 prisoners in a single day. In recent months, in a desperate attempt to put an end to the popular uprising, the Iranian authorities have taken the lives of people who only exercised their right to demonstrate.”
It is alarming for human rights activists that 90% of the executions recorded worldwide, excluding China, were carried out in just three countries in the region. The number of executions in Iran rose from 314 in 2021 to 576 in 2022, in Saudi Arabia it tripled from 65 to 196, the highest recorded by Amnesty International in 30 years, and Egypt executed 24 people in 2022.
The secrecy associated with the use of the death penalty continued to hinder its accurate assessment in some countries, such as China, North Korea and Vietnam, where the death penalty is known to be used en masse, meaning that the global rate is much higher. Although the exact number of people executed in China is not known, it is clear that it has remained the leading country in this indicator, ahead of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States.
Human rights activists note that the number of executions is growing, including because some states have resumed this practice. We are talking about Afghanistan, Kuwait, Myanmar, Palestine and Singapore. 40% of the death sentences included in the statistics of “Amnesty International” were imposed for drug-related crimes.
The only good news is that in 2022 six countries joined the camp of states that have abolished capital punishment. Kazakhstan, the Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, Equatorial Guinea and Zambia – for criminal ones.
After a record 125 UN member states called for a moratorium on the death penalty, Amnesty International hopes the death penalty will go down in the annals of history, human rights activists say:
“The tragic numbers of 2022 are a reminder that it is too early to rest on our laurels, and we must continue to mobilize efforts until the death penalty is abolished around the world.”
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