Outlaw capital punishment: Amnesty International

Despite a rise in 2010 in the number of countries that carried out executions, Amnesty International says momentum is still with those seeking to outlaw the practice, The Globe and Mail reported on Monday.

According to Amnesty International, an increasing number of countries have stripped capital punishment from their books, and fewer executions are being reported across the globe.

Zimbabwe

The death penalty has been found to be tortuous, inhuman, degrading and contrary to the principles of "everyone's right to life" as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which Zimbabwe is a signatory. Those condemned to death in Zimbabwe's prisons therefore have every right to clamour for clemency.

Call of the executioner

The number of countries executing convicts rose to 23 in 2010, four more than the previous year. The year 2009 saw the lowest number of countries impose the death penalty since the 50-year-old rights organization began keeping statistics. At least 2,024 new death sentences were imposed during 2010 in 67 countries, including 365 in Pakistan alone, meaning it has some 8,000 people currently on death row.

Abolishment

The West African nation of Gabon became the 96th nation to officially abolish the use of capital punishment, and the number of such abolitionist countries have doubled in the past two decades.

Fewer executions

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.

Top killer

China retained the title of the world's top 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. Amnesty says it has challenged the Chinese authorities to publish figures for the number of people sentenced to death and executed each year to confirm claims of a reduction in the use of the death penalty. Other top executioners identified by Amnesty included Iran, which executed at least 252 people in 2010, North Korea, with at least 60 executions, and Yemen, with at least 53 executions. The rights group warned that those numbers could be far higher. For example, it said it had credible reports of more than 300 additional executions in Iran. Information from North Korea and other repressive communist countries remains incomplete, it said.

By many means

Methods of execution included beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection and various kinds of shooting (by firing squad, and at close range to the heart or the head). No stonings were recorded in 2010, but stoning sentences were reported in Nigeria, Pakistan and Iran, where at least 10 women and four men remain under stoning sentences.

Drugs and death

Amnesty expressed particular alarm that a significant proportion of executions or death sentences recorded in 2010 were for drug-related offences. They accounted for more than half of 114 sentences in Malaysia.

Children in the crosshairs

Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates ignored international prohibitions and imposed death sentences on child offenders – people aged 17 or less when alleged crimes were committed, with Iran executing one such offender.