Report: ‘China World’s Lead Executioner’

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent, Worthy News

BEIJING (Worthy News) – Advocacy group Amnesty International, which campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty, has named China as the world’s “lead executioner.”

Amnesty International’s annual report on global capital punishment estimated that thousands were put to death in the Communist-run nation in 2024.

The watchdog said China’s secretive practices, combined with ongoing religious persecution, set it apart even from countries with record-high confirmed execution counts.

Amnesty recorded at least 1,518 executions globally in 2024 — the highest number in a decade and a 32 percent increase from the previous year.

The figure does not include executions in China, North Korea, and Vietnam, where the death penalty is widely believed to be used extensively, but government secrecy reportedly prevents verification.

“China has yet to publish any figures on the death penalty; however, available information indicates that each year thousands of people are executed and sentenced to death,” Amnesty complained in its annual report on executions, seen by Worthy News. “Amnesty International renews its call on the Chinese authorities to publish information on the use of the death penalty in China.”

In 2009, Amnesty stopped publishing its estimated figures on the use of the death penalty in China, saying the decision “reflected concerns about how the Chinese authorities misrepresented Amnesty International’s numbers.”

INFORMATION RESTRICTIONS

The group said it “always made clear that the figures it was able to publish on China were significantly lower than the reality, because of the restrictions on access to information.”

China’s death penalty system, coupled with its persecution of minority Christians and other religious minorities such as Uyghur Muslims and Falun Gong practitioners, places it “at the center of global human rights concerns,” activists say.

However, Amnesty has also expressed concerns about the United States and other countries still carrying out death sentences.

Additionally, the advocacy group noticed that besides China, the death penalty remained “a prominent tool” used by “several governments to exert control on the population and stifle dissent.”

Autocratic leaderships in, for instance, Iran and Saudi Arabia targeted especially “human rights defenders, protesters, dissidents, and political opponents.”

Amnesty added that the use of the death penalty is “having a disproportionate impact on those belonging to ethnic or religious minorities and from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.” Christians are among those being targeted, documented by Worthy News and Amnesty investigators.

“Among other examples, the Iranian authorities used the death penalty to punish individuals who had challenged, or were perceived as having challenged, the Islamic Republic establishment and its politico-religious ideologies during the Woman Life Freedom uprising of September-December 2022,” added Amnesty’s report.

‘WEAPONIZING’ EXECUTION

“The Saudi authorities continued to weaponize the death penalty to silence political dissent and punish nationals from the country’s Shi’a minority who supported ‘anti-government’ protests between 2011 and 2013,” Amnesty stressed.

However, these were not isolated incidents. “Resort to the death penalty for broadly defined ‘security’ or terrorism related offences was significant across several countries,” Amnesty wrote.

The group is pleased that Zimbabwe has abolished the death penalty, a widely expected move in a country that last carried out the punishment nearly two decades ago.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who once faced the death penalty himself in the 1960s during the war of independence, approved the law in December after a bill passed through Parliament.

Zimbabwe had about 60 prisoners on death row, and the new law spared them. “This Act [on abolition] is more than a legal reform; it is a statement of our commitment to justice and humanity […] We recognise the importance of rehabilitation and the need to move away from retribution,” said Ziyambi Ziyambi, Minister of Justice and Parliamentary Affairs of Zimbabwe.

Amnesty hopes more countries, including China, will follow that example.

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