Amnesty International has released its report Death Sentences and Executions 2010. It's available in Adobe .pdf. Additional graphics are also available.
"Amnesty: After hitting record low, number of countries executing convicts has inched back up," is the AP post, via the Washington Post.
The number of countries executing convicts rose to 23 in 2010, four more than the previous year, Amnesty International said in a report published Monday.
The year 2009 saw the lowest number of countries impose the death penalty since the 50-year-old rights organization began keeping statistics.
Despite the rise in 2010, the London-based group said momentum is still with those who are seeking to outlaw the practice, which it argues is cruel and degrading. An increasing number of countries have stripped capital punishment from their books, and fewer executions are being reported across the globe, the report said.
“Countries that use the death penalty are increasingly isolated following a decade of progress toward abolition,” Amnesty said in a statement. “A world free of the death penalty is not only possible, it is inevitable. The question is how long will it take.”
The West African nation of Gabon became the 96th nation to officially eschew the use of capital punishment in February 2010, and the number of such abolitionist countries have doubled in the past two decades, the group said.
In many countries that still carry out executions, the use of the death penalty has dropped. The United States executed 46 people in 2010, a fall from 2009, when 52 people were put to death. Amnesty noted that the 110 death sentences handed down in the United States in 2010 represent only about a third of the number handed down in the mid-1990s.
Globally, Amnesty reported that at least 527 executions were carried out in 2010, although that figure only represents a fraction of the death sentences thought to have been imposed worldwide.
China retained the title of the world’s biggest executioner, killing what Amnesty estimated were thousands of convicts. The group said it could not put a specific figure on the number of people sentenced to death there because the issue of executions in China is shrouded in secrecy.
"Executions down in 2010, rights groups says," by Adrian Croft at Reuters.
At least 527 people were executed around the world last year, down from 714 in 2009, although China is believed to have put to death thousands more, human rights group Amnesty International said on Monday.
It said Beijing was thought to have executed far more people than the rest of the world combined. Amnesty's tally does not include figures for China, which describes them as state secrets, the rights group said.
At least 23 countries carried out judicial executions in 2010, four more than the previous year, Amnesty said in its annual report on the death penalty, which it wants abolished.
China has scrapped the death penalty for 13 non-violent crimes including smuggling historic relics and tax fraud-related offenses, but capital punishment will still apply to 55 offences, Chinese news reports said last month.
"Amnesty International: Death penalty on decline, US in top 5," by Tom A. Peter for the Christian Science Monitor.
Around the world, the death penalty appears to be in decline. However, a new report by Amnesty International reveals that a handful of countries continue the practice.
China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, and the United States lead the world in carrying out the most death sentences. And China is suspected of executing more people in 2010 than all other countries combined – although that number is uncertain because China does not disclose its death penalty information.
Although there has been a downward trend in executions, officials at Amnesty International have expressed concern over China’s reluctance to make its execution records public and a number of other countries who still issue death sentences for drug-related offenses.
“In spite of some setbacks, developments in 2010 brought us closer to global abolition,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s secretary general in an official press release. “For the third time and with more support than ever before, the UN General Assembly called for a global moratorium on executions. Any country that continues to execute is flying in the face of the fact that both human rights law and UN human rights bodies consistently hold that abolition should be the objective.”
"Death Penalty in 2010: Executing countries left isolated after decade of progress," is the AI news release announcing the report.
Countries which continue to use the death penalty are being left increasingly isolated following a decade of progress towards abolition, Amnesty International has said today in its new report Death Sentences and Executions in 2010.
A total of 31 countries abolished the death penalty in law or in practice during the last 10 years but China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA and Yemen remain amongst the most frequent executioners, some in direct contradiction of international human rights law.
The total number of executions officially recorded by Amnesty International in 2010 went down from at least 714 people in 2009 to at least 527 in 2010, excluding China.
China is believed to have executed thousands in 2010 but continues to maintain its secrecy over its use of the death penalty.
“The minority of states that continue to systematically use the death penalty were responsible for thousands of executions in 2010, defying the global anti-death penalty trend,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
Shetty posted, "The global movement to kill the death penalty," at the AI Livewire blog.
Related posts are in the report index.
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