Executions carried out in 2013 are on the rise, but are concentrated in a shrinking number of countries. These are the conclusions of the Amnesty International report.
Executions carried out in 2013 numbered 778, a rise of 15 per cent compared with the 682 recorded in 2012. This is the headline finding of the report published on 27 March 2014 by the non-governmental organisation Amnesty International. These figures, which the NGO has arranged in an interactive map, exclude the thousands of Chinese executions that the authorities in Beijing continue to keep secret.
The figure that deserves emphasis, however, is that these executions are concentrated in a shrinking number of countries — 22 to be precise. There were 37 thirty years ago, and 25 in 2004.
Excluding China, which is the world's leading country for executions even though the precise figure is unknown, the ranking is headed by Iran, where executions in 2013 numbered 369 (although those carried out in secret could put the real total at over 700), followed by Iraq with 169 and Saudi Arabia with 79. The United States — the only country in the Americas to permit this practice — comes fourth, but first among Western nations, with 39 executions carried out, 41 per cent of them in Texas alone. It should be noted that thanks to the abolition of the death penalty in Maryland the previous year, there are now 18 US states where the harshest sentence is life imprisonment.
"The increase in killings we have witnessed in Iran and Iraq is shameful. Yet those states that still cling to the death penalty are on the wrong side of history and are in fact becoming increasingly isolated," said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
The countries that have reintroduced it into their penal codes are Indonesia, Kuwait, Nigeria and Vietnam. By contrast, the regions free from this inhumane practice are Europe (with the sole blemish of Belarus, where, however, no executions were carried out in 2013) and Oceania, although the government of Papua New Guinea has indicated it is open to reintroducing it.
On the African continent, the countries that carried out executions in 2013 number five: Botswana, South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria.
Shetty is nonetheless optimistic about the long-term trend, which appears clear: "The death penalty is becoming a thing of the past. We urge all governments that still kill in the name of justice to impose an immediate moratorium on the death penalty, with a view to its abolition."