So just how many people did China execute?
Amnesty says China Executed Thousands in 2009
Amnesty International has released its annual death penalty report, which shows the number of countries that use capital punishment is declining. But the report estimates that China executed several thousand people in 2009.
But he says in some countries the number of executions remains high. Amnesty estimates several thousand people were executed in China in 2009, but Luther says an exact figure is impossible to gauge.
“There is sort of a shroud of secrecy that hangs over the death penalty in China and we are challenging China in this report to lift that shroud of secrecy,” adds Luther. “China, in fact, has said that it has decreased the use of the death penalty in the country, but frankly it needs to make those statistics public to show this is really the case.”
Beijing says details of its executions are a state secret. But it says the number of executions has gone down since 2007, after it became mandatory for death sentences to be reviewed by a higher court. </em>
