Amnesty criticises ‘rogue state’ China as global death penalty toll falls<\/p>\n
Benjamin Haas in Hong Kong
@haasbenjamin
Monday 10 April 2017 19.01 EDT<\/p>\n
Amnesty International<\/a> has sharply criticised China for continuing to conceal the number of people it sentences to death, as the human rights group reported a fall in executions globally last year. <\/p>\n The number of executions around the world fell by more than a third to 1,032 across 23 countries in 2016, compared with 1,634 in 25 countries in 2015. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan were the top executioners.<\/p>\n It is estimated that China<\/a> executes thousands of people, but Beijing does not release statistics and considers the number of death sentences to be a state secret.<\/p>\n Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty\u2019s east Asia director, said: \u201cIt is time for China<\/a> to stop being a rogue state in the international community with respect to the death penalty and finally allow the Chinese people to have a proper, informed debate about capital punishment in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n China has a conviction rate of about 99.9% and criminal trials heavily rely on confessions. Rights activists say suspects are often tortured or coerced into admitting guilt.<\/p>\n The Chinese government claims it has reduced the use of the death penalty and taken steps under a policy of \u201ckilling fewer, killing cautiously\u201d. As part of this, the county\u2019s top court must now approve death sentences handed out by lower courts.<\/p>\n But without concrete statistics, activists say there is no way to verify government claims. \u201cThere is absolutely no way to tell if death sentences are going up or down in China,\u201d Bequelin said. \u201cMembers of the international community have become very complacent on taking China\u2019s word at face value.\u201d<\/p>\n For years, China has rebuffed requests by the United Nations for more data on executions and ignored UN resolutions to increase transparency.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In one high-profile case<\/a> that highlighted the problematic use of the death penalty, last year a man was exonerated 21 years after he was executed by firing squad for murder.<\/p>\n China\u2019s court system has a database of sentences, but it is largely incomplete, Amnesty found. Hundreds of death penalty cases were missing from the official judicial database, including all instances of foreigners sentenced to die over drug-related offences.<\/p>\n \u201cChina doesn\u2019t want to be embarrassed and they don\u2019t want the extra scrutiny,\u201d said William Nee, a China researcher at Amnesty. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about thousands of lives \u2013 not only wrongful executions but also cases where people are perhaps guilty but there are mitigating circumstances or issues of fair legal representation.\u201d<\/p>\n The two largest offences that were omitted from the government database were drug charges and so-called terrorism cases. There are 46 crimes punishable by death in China, including drug offences, arson and embezzlement.<\/p>\n Amnesty singled out China\u2019s use of the death penalty in terrorism cases, mainly centred on the north-west Xinjiang region, home to the Turkic Muslim Uighur ethnic group.<\/p>\n Authorities launched a \u201cstrike hard\u201d campaign after a series of attacks, which included death sentences being handed out in public trials held in sports stadiums<\/a>. \u201cWhenever we\u2019ve seen a strike hard campaign, we\u2019ve traditionally seen increases in death sentences,\u201d said Nee.<\/p>\n