Death penalty around the world - Data Summary

Data summary

Death penalty around the world

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Country	Executions, 2011	Death sentences 2011	Executions, 2012	Death sentences 2012	TOTAL EXECUTED, 2007-2012	TOTAL SENTENCED TO DEATH, 2007-2012
AFGHANISTAN	2		14		34	364
ALGERIA		51		153	0	752
BAHAMAS					0	8
BAHRAIN		5		1	2	8
BANGLADESH	5	49	1	45	28	423
BARBADOS				2	0	1
BELARUS	2	2	3		9	12
BENIN					0	6
BOTSWANA		1	2	5	4	7
BRUNEI DARUSSALAM		3			0	3
BURKINA FASO					0	8
BURUNDI					0	1
CAMEROON					0	0
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC					0	14
CHAD				2	0	13
CHINA	THOUSANDS	THOUSANDS	THOUSANDS	THOUSANDS	THOUSANDS	THOUSANDS
CONGO (Democratic Republic)				11	0	74
EGYPT	1	123		91	12	704
EQUATORIAL GUINEA				1	7	4
ETHIOPIA					1	55
GAMBIA		13	9	5	0	31
GHANA		4		27	0	31
GUATEMALA					0	1
GUINEA		16		2	0	19
GUYANA		3		5	0	7
INDIA		110	1	78	0	435
INDONESIA		6		12	11	35
IRAN	360	156	314	79	1,663	156
IRAQ	68	291	129	81	256	1,420
JAMAICA					0	7
JAPAN		10	7	3	33	108
JORDAN		15		16	0	67
KENYA		11		21	0	16
KOREA (NORTH)	30		6		105	0
KOREA (SOUTH)				2	0	13
KUWAIT		17		9	1	31
LAOS					0	6
LEBANON		8		9	0	24
LIBERIA		1		4	0	15
LIBYA				5	39	0
MADAGASCAR					0	14
MALAWI		2			0	4
MALAYSIA		108		60	2	324
MALDIVES				2	0	1
MALI		2		10	0	41
MAURITANIA		8		6	0	33
MONGOLIA					1	45
MOROCCO		5		7	0	27
MYANMAR		33		17	0	37
NIGER					0	1
NIGERIA		72		56	0	341
OMAN					4	7
PAKISTAN		313	1	242	171	1,497
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY	3	5	6	6	8	33
PAPUA NEW GUINEA		5			0	8
QATAR		3		1	0	6
SAINT KITTS & NEVIS					1	1
SAINT VINCENT AND & THE GRENADINES					0	1
SAINT LUCIA		1			0	1
SAUDI ARABIA	82	9	79	10	423	54
SIERRA LEONE		2			0	7
SINGAPORE		5		2	4	26
SOMALIA	10	37	6	76	23	57
SRI LANKA				7	0	120
SUDAN	7	13	19	199	30	166
SUDAN (SOUTH)	5	1	5		5	1
SWAZILAND				1
SYRIA					33	34
TAIWAN	5	16	6	7	9	45
TANZANIA				3	0	5
THAILAND		40		106	2	56
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO		2		5	0	12
TUNISIA				9	0	27
UGANDA		5			0	134
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES	1	31	1	21	2	64
UNITED STATES	43	78	43	77	220	504
VIETNAM	5	23		86	58	258
YEMEN	41	29	28	7	152	109
ZAMBIA		48		7	0	91
ZIMBABWE		1		11	0	17
TOTALS (exc China)	670	1,792	680	1,722	6,221	24,172

Source: The Guardian

Executioners - and abolitionists

Number of countries

Executing countries

Abolitionist

stack percentages

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2011

2012

Abolitionist - light blue, and retentionist dark blue

Changing attitudes to the death penalty in Southeast Asia

Comment: Changing attitudes to the death penalty in Southeast Asia

24 Jul 2013, 3:50 pm   -   Source: Brigid Delaney

There is growing opposition to capital punishment in southeast Asia.

It’s our own backyard – but how much do we know about how the death penalty operates in Southeast Asia, asks Brigid Delaney.

It’s our own backyard – but how much do we know about how the death penalty operates in Southeast Asia?

By Brigid Delaney

The issue only gets media traction here when an Australian such as Van Nyugen is executed or members of the so-called Bali 9, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran receive the death penalty.

Yet there are hundreds of men and women on death row in southeast Asia. The lawyers and groups supporting death row prisoners are often stretched and under-resourced.

But increasingly, laws and attitudes regarding the death penalty in our region are changing.

SINGAPORE                                                              
 
Just seven years ago Singapore executed Australian man Van Nyugen under the country’s harsh drug laws. Ten years ago Singapore had enjoyed the dubious distinction of carrying out the most executions per capita of any country in the world. But things are changing. Late last year, the law changed to allow discretion for judges to impose a life sentence. Previously, a guilty verdict, barring a granting of clemency by the president, meant the death penalty was the only sentencing option.

Last week, it was reported that a Malaysian prisoner in Singapore with a murder conviction escaped the death penalty, having his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, following a relaxation of sentencing laws in Parliament.
Fabian Adiu Edwin, 23, had his low IQ and youth taken into account by Singapore’s High Court.
 
The news was welcomed by death penalty abolitionists and human rights lawyers.
 
Julian McMahon, part of the legal team who represented Van Nyugen in his capital trial, praised moves by Singapore away from a hardline approach. He wrote on ABC’s The Drum, “Singapore, which prides itself on being both conservative and modern, has perhaps been embarrassed by the rigidity of its criminal law regime, parts of which belong to a long bygone era.
 
“Allowing judges to actually judge and sentence serious drug cases on a case by case basis is a necessary and long overdue step, but most welcomed by the international community.”
 
MALAYSIA

As Australian man Dominic Bird faces a Malaysian court on July 24, on drug charges that attract the death penalty, there are some signs that Malaysians are moving away from support for current laws.
 
Last week it was reported that a survey of 1,535 Malaysians showed little support for the mandatory implementation of the death penalty – particularly for drugs offences.
 
Instead there was support for discretionary use of the death penalty.

Members of the Malaysian Bar have been strongly outspoken in their opposition to the death penalty, and leading advocates take on death penalty cases pro bono.

A human rights’ activist in Malaysia last year told me: “The Malaysian Bar Council in 2011 carried a unanimous motion against the death penalty.”

But convincing the public is a more difficult proposition. “There is a big drug problem in Malaysia and very little rehabilitation centres,” she said. The death penalty works as a powerful deterrent, goes the accepted thinking.

But she thought the government might be swayed “to get rid of the death penalty if the public want it abolished.”

 
INDONESIA
 
Indonesia is a powerful “key domino” in the region when it comes to influencing the death penalty abolition of its neighbours, Dr Dave McCrae of the Lowy Institute wrote last year.
 
In an analysis published in March 2012 McCrae wrote that “Indonesia remains at a crossroads concerning capital punishment, with competing forces advocating for greater use of the death penalty and for its abolition.”
 
“Whether or not Indonesia abolishes the death penalty matters to Australia for principled and practical reasons.”
 
Last year Indonesia, which has more than a hundred people on death row, made what many Indonesia watchers saw as positive moves towards abolition.
 
When a 54-year-old Indonesian maid working in Saudi Arabia was beheaded after being convicted of killing her employer, the Indonesian public and government were outraged. The execution provoked a diplomatic incident. Indonesia recalled its consular staff, and the issue was hotly debated in the nation’s media.
 
In the aftermath, Indonesia reached out to its citizens on death row around the world, providing legal assistance and establishing a taskforce to protect the approximately 200 Indonesians facing the death penalty overseas.
 
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, clemency was granted to four prisoners on death row, convicted of drug offences. But a public backlash by some Indonesians against this softening led, this year, to a return to executions after a four-year moratorium.
 
In March 2013, Adami Wilson, a Malawi national convicted of drug smuggling, was executed by firing squad. The execution of three others followed.
 
The Indonesian government announced there is a list of around 10 people that they plan to execute this year. It is not known if Australian’s Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are on that list. They face a nervous wait in Kerobokan prison for news of their clemency application, which has been lodged with Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

THAILAND                                                                  

Thailand does not have a mandatory death sentence for any offence, but capital sentences are imposed frequently with 706 people on death row in Thailand as of late May 2013. Around half of these are for drug offences.

Reprieve Australia sent a research team to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand in 2012 to report on capital punishment regimes in those countries and on resources and public appetite for abolition.

They found in Thailand that “currently, men condemned to death are permanently shackled by what is politically described as ‘instruments of restraint’.

“These shackles are welded on to the ankles and are not removed, even during illness.”

In a move welcomed by human rights activists, in May this year leg irons were deemed ‘unnecessarily cruel’ by the Thai Corrections Department, and their use was banned.

Apart from overturning practices relating to shackling, legal reform in Thailand has been slow.

At a seminar late last year in Thailand, human rights activists and experts said the country was “falling behind its neighbours” in southeast Asia when it came to the abolition of the death penalty.

The Philippines abolished the death penalty in 2006 and Cambodia has no death penalty under its constitution.

Pol Colonel Aeknarat Sawettanand, director-general of the Department of Rights and Liberty Protection told the seminar that “many Thais are still in the mindset of revenge and retribution, which poses a hurdle in trying to convince them that it is against human rights standards to retain the death penalty.”

Roseann Rife, deputy director of Amnesty International's Asia Pacific program, said Thailand needs to "move swiftly and decisively" to end the death penalty. She said “public opinion was rarely in favour of abolishing the death penalty until abolition is passed into law. So, it was necessary for activists and the government to take the lead.”

Aeknarat called on the Thai Parliament to show leadership in implementing reforms and abolishing the death penalty.

VIETNAM
 
Last month Vietnam announced it would begin to kill death row prisoners by lethal injection.

Previously prisoners were executed by firing squad due to the unavailability of poisons in Vietnam needed to make the mixture for lethal injection. The EU had refused to export chemicals to Vietnam that would be used in executions.

This has led to a backlog of prisoners awaiting execution as the use of firing squads had been phased out. However once Vietnam started manufacturing its own poisons, the Minister of Public Security Tran Dai Quang had announced that the implementation of the death penalty by lethal injection would start from June 27.

There are more than 560 prisoners under death penalty and 170 people are eligible for lethal injection.

The New York Times reported that Amnesty International activists working in Vietnam had hoped EU moratorium on manufacturing the drugs would lead to abolition of the death penalty. Yet sentences of death for mostly drug and murder offences continued. In 2012, Amnesty International reported that at least 86 people were sentenced to death.
 
One of those facing the death penalty is an American citizen who was caught last month allegedly attempting to smuggle more than a kilogram of heroin to Sydney, via Vietnam.
 
Local media reported this week that despite Vietnam starting to manufacture its own lethal injection drugs, and rights’ groups anticipating a ‘mass killing’, no prisoners have been executed yet.
 
Cao Ngoc Oanh, director of the central police department in charge of managing nationwide prisons, told the media on June 26 that “we are not ready to carry out with lethal injections.” Any further information was “classified.”
 
According to reports in the Vietnamese media, death row prisoners are suffering considerable mental anguish due to uncertainty about their fate.
 
‘“Many prisoners have been waiting to be executed for five to six years,” said lawmaker Nguyen Van Hien, adding that many prisoners have been begging to be executed.’
 
Brigid Delaney is a freelance journalist. She has worked as a lawyer and currently volunteers for Reprieve. She is also the co-founder of the Mercy Campaign, which is campaigning for clemency in the cases of Australians on death row - Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. - World News Australia, 24/7/2013, Changing attitudes to the death penalty in Southeast Asia

Malaysia: 964 on death row (July 2013)

Kluang MP: High time to end mandatory death penalty

11:42AM Jul 9, 2013

 

DAP political education director and MP for Kluang Liew Chin Tong has urged the government to hold a moratorium to review mandatory death penalty laws, calling it an “archaic form of punishment”.

In a press statement today, Liew said, “It is high time for Malaysia to review the death penalty as it is an archaic form of punishment that is inconsistent with international norms.

“I urge the government to at least review laws that allow the mandatory death sentence and to return discretion to the judges. “

Liew (left) quoted figures supplied to him from the Home Ministry, which stated there are currently 964 inmates on death-row for various offences.

“The death sentence is a punishment that is both inhumane and irreversible. The impossibility of eliminating human error and the ineffectiveness of the sentence as a deterrent also raises many issues.

“There should be amendments to empower judges to replace the death sentence with jail time for drug mules,” said Liew

Poll: Folk against mandatory death for some crimes

This comes after a UK-based NGO, ‘The Death Penalty Project’, yesterday released its findings of a door-to-door survey of around 1,500 Malaysians, conducted between November and December last year to look into public opinion on mandatory death penalty.

The survey found that while more than 75 percent of people supported the death penalty for murder, drug trafficking and firearms; support for the mandatory death penalty was much lower.

While 56 percent said they were in favor of mandatory death penalty for murder, only 45 percent supported a mandatory death sentence for firearms offences, and between 25 and 44 percent for drug trafficking.

The group also provided participants with 12 individual ‘scenario cases’ in which the death penalty was a mandatory sentence, and found that only 1.2 percent of respondents thought that the death penalty was appropriate.

In March last year, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nazri Abdul Aziz said that the government would look at amending the laws only if it had the support of the public.