“Slowly, but surely we approach a world without the death penalty. One by one the world leaders will abolish the death penalty just as they used to abolish slavery and apartheid,” said John Peder Egenæs (picture below), Secretary General of Amnesty International Norway.

More states abolish death penalty
Amnesty International on 29 March 2010 announced an overview of the use of the death penalty in 2009 in the report Death Sentences and Executions in 2009. Number of countries that undertook executions fell from 25 in 2008 to 18 countries in 2009.

At least 714 people were executed in 18 countries and at least 2001 people were sentenced to death in 56 countries last year. The overview excludes the thousands of executions that were likely to have taken place in the People´s Republic of China, where information on the death penalty

remains a state secret. The actual execution figures are therefore considerably higher.

Legend: * Blue: The death penalty is completely abolished * Green: abolished except special circumstances (like war) * Orange: Not used in the past 10 years * Red: Used regularly.

Nevertheless, the development is such that the world is about to abolish the death penalty. There are now 95 countries that have entirely removed state killings from their law. Last countries were Burundi and Togo. 139 countries have abolished the death penalty in legislation or in practice.

“Until the world sees a final worldwide abolition of this cruel and degrading punishment method, we just continue to protest every execution as an insult to human dignity,” emphasizes Egenæs.

the People´s Republic of China tops the statistics
Amnesty International’s research shows that countries that still carry out executions are the exception rather than the rule. In addition to the People´s Republic of China, the worst offending nations were Iran with at least 388 executions, Iraq at least 120, Saudi Arabia at least 69 and the USA with 52.

Methods of execution used in the world in 2009 were: hanging, shooting, beheading, stoning, electrocution and lethal injection.

Protest against secrecy
In 2009 the People´s Republic of China executed probably more than the rest of the world combined. In a challenge to China’s lack of transparency, Amnesty International has decided not to publish its own minimum figures for Chinese executions and death sentences in 2009. Estimates based on the publicly available information grossly under represent the actual number the state killed or sentenced to death.

“This does not mean that we monitor and investigate the People´s Republic of China less than before. However because of strong secrecy, the numbers that Amnesty has gathered represent only a fraction of the real numbers, and thus gives a distorted picture of reality,” explains Egenæs.

Information on the death penalty in the People´s Republic of China is considered a state secret. Meanwhile the Chinese authorities claim that fewer executions are taking place.

“If this is the case, Amnesty International urges strongly the Chinese authorities to prove this by telling how many people they actually execute and condemn to death,” said Egenæs.

Political terrorism agent
The past year saw capital punishment applied extensively to send political messages, to silence opponents or to promote political agendas in the People´s Republic of China, Iran and Sudan, according to Amnesty International’s report.

In Iran, 112 executions were known to have taken place in the eight-week period between the presidential election on 12 June and the inauguration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term as President on 5 August.

Here you can find the full document “Death sentences and executions in 2009” (pdf).

Read more:
The death penalty in 2009
Iran executions send a chilling message
South Korea death penalty abolition set back by Constitutional Court ruling

Here you can watch the video overviewing of the death penalty for 2009.

  • Regional Summaries:
    No executions took place in Europe in 2009. Belarus remains the only nation to use the death penalty in the region. Although no one was executed in the former Soviet country last year, two people were killed by the state in March 2010.
  • In North and South America, only the United States carried out executions in 2009. Of the 52 executions that took place in the US, 24 were executed in the state of Texas. In March 2009 the New Mexico, the fifteenth state in the United States abolished the death penalty.
  • In Asia, thousands of executions were likely to have taken place in the People´s Republic of China, where information on the death penalty remains a state secret. Only seven other countries were known to have carried out executions – Bangladesh, Japan, North Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam – with 26 executions known to have taken place. Afghanistan, Indonesia, Mongolia and Pakistan did not carry out executions in 2009, the first execution-free year in those countries in recent times.
  • In the Middle East and North Africa at least 624 executions were known to have been carried out in seven countries: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen. Saudi Arabia and Iran executed seven people who were under 18 at the time of the alleged offence, in violation of international law. Several countries – Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco/Western Sahara and Tunisia – maintained longstanding moratoriums on executions.
  • In sub-Saharan Africa only two countries executed prisoners: Botswana and Sudan. The largest mass commutation of death sentences ever known to Amnesty International took place in Kenya as the government announced that more than 4,000 condemned prisoners would have their sentences commuted to imprisonment.