Amnesty International says recorded executions in 2022 reached the highest level in five years.
The organization recorded 883 executions across 20 countries, marking a rise of 53%. The figure doesn’t include China, where it’s believed thousands of people are executed every year, although the exact numbers are kept secret.
Amnesty says the rise in executions in 2022 was led by countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
“Disturbingly, 90% of the world’s known executions outside China were carried out by just three countries in the region,” Amnesty’s report said. “Recorded executions in Iran soared from 314 in 2021 to 576 in 2022; figures tripled in Saudi Arabia, from 65 in 2021 to 196 in 2022 - the highest recorded by Amnesty in 30 years - while Egypt executed 24 individuals.”
State repression
Many of the executions in these countries are for drug-related offences. However, both Iran and Saudi Arabia continue to use the death penalty as a tool of state repression, according to Chiara Sangiorgio, a co-author of the Amnesty report – who highlighted Tehran’s brutal response to the anti-government protests that broke out following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. Amini was detained by Iran’s morality police in September 2022 and died in custody.
“We saw, for example, towards the end of the year, Iran making arrests and using the death penalty to punish the protests, with executions and death sentences continuing well into 2023,” Sangiorgio told VOA. “In addition to that one characteristic, sadly, of the use of the death penalty in Iran is the disproportionate impact of executions on ethnic minorities and religious minorities.”
Those minorities are also disproportionately impacted in Saudi Arabia.
“And in fact, we had 81 executions in one day in 2022. And half of them were actually people belonging to the Shia minority in Saudi Arabia,” she said.
China
The report says that the use of the death penalty “remained shrouded in secrecy in several countries, including China, North Korea, and Viet Nam - countries that are known to use the death penalty extensively - meaning that the true global figure is far higher.”
Amnesty says it is clear that China remains the world’s most prolific executioner.
“It remains a country that in secrecy carries out thousands of executions a year and imposes the same amount of death sentences. But it's really impossible to put a concrete number to that, because of the secrecy. We have official confirmations coming from the authorities that execution for drug related offenses, for example, are carried out; that corruption is punished with the death penalty. But the numbers remain a state secret,” Sangiorgio told VOA.
Myanmar
In 2022, Myanmar resumed the use of the death penalty for the first time since the 1980s. Among those executed by military government were democracy activist Kyaw Min Yu and former lawmaker Maung Kyaw.
Four other countries - Afghanistan, Kuwait, the State of Palestine and Singapore – also resumed the death penalty after a hiatus.
Drug offenses
“The recorded number of people executed for drug-related offences more than doubled in 2022 compared to 2021,” the report said. “Drug-related executions are in violation of international human rights law which states that executions should only be carried out for the ‘most serious crimes’ - crimes that involve intentional killing. These executions were recorded in China, Saudi Arabia (57), Iran (255) and Singapore (11), and amounted to 37% of total executions recorded globally by the organization.”
Death penalty abolished
Amnesty said there are ‘glimmers of hope’ as six countries abolished the death penalty either fully or partially. Those ending the practice altogether included included Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic.
“The positive momentum continued as Liberia and Ghana took legislative steps toward abolishing the death penalty, while the authorities of Sri Lanka and the Maldives said they would not resort to implementing death sentences. Bills to abolish the mandatory death penalty were also tabled in the Malaysian Parliament,” the report added.
United States
The United States saw a small rise in the number of executions, from 11 to 18. Amnesty’s Chiara Sangiorgio told VOA she believed opinion in the U.S. is turning against the death penalty.
“We still have the second lowest number of death sentences in the recent history of the death penalty in the U.S. – because that tells us that the mood and the opinion of the death penalty among the jurors that sit on the penalty trial has changed,” Sangiorgio said.
While the Amnesty report covers 2022, executions in Iran continue to rise in 2023. At least 209 people have been put to death this year, according to the United Nations, which has called for a halt to the practice.
