London – Despite legal reforms, China still executes the most prisoners in the world. The official number is 470, but Amnesty International estimates that in reality this figure is more like 8,000. “That is 374 deaths during the Olympic Games.”
Today, Amnesty published a survey of the number of worldwide executions and concluded that China has the worst record. The human rights organization is seizing on the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing to draw extra attention to the situation in China.
The country gets the “gold medal” for executions, according to Kate Allen, the director of Britain’s Amnesty. “According to reliable sources, we are talking about an average of 22 executions per day,” says Allen. If the death penalty is carried out at that rate during the Games, there would be, according to her, 374 executions.
Amnesty calls on China to remove “the veil of secrecy” surrounding the death penalty. The International Olympic Committee and the participating athletes must seize upon the games to move the Chinese government towards ”more openness” on the death penalty, says Amnesty.
According to China itself, the number of executions has fallen by 10 percent, after it was determined last year that each death sentence had to be presented to the Supreme Court.
Worldwide there were, according to official figures, 1252 people executed last year, compared to 1591 in 2006. Behind China followed Iran (317), Saudi Arabia (143), Pakistan (135) and the United States (42) as countries that implemented the death penalty the most.
“We call upon all countries to follow the U.N. effort to ban the death penalty,” said Amnesty.
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