International human rights organisation Amnesty International says that four of the world’s five top executioners in 2020 were Middle East states.
Iran, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia accounted for 88% of the 483 reported executions worldwide.
The BBC reports that Amnesty International accuses these states of displaying ‘a ruthless and chilling persistence’ when most of the world was focused on saving people’s lives during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The global total was the lowest in a decade, but it did not include China. China is believed to execute thousands of people each year, but the data on its use of the death penalty is a state secret.
Secrecy in North Korea and Vietnam also made it impossible to verify reports from those two countries.
The last of the top five was the United States, where the Trump administration resumed federal executions after a 17-year gap and put 10 people to death in under six months.
The 483 executions in 18 countries reported during 2020 represented a decrease of 26% compared to 2019’s 657 executions, and a fall of 70% from a peak of 1 634 executions in 2015, according to Amnesty International’s annual report on the death penalty.
Said Amnesty’s secretary general Agnès Callamard: ‘As the world focused on finding ways to protect lives from Covid-19, several governments showed a disturbing determination to resort to the death penalty and execute people no matter what.
‘The death penalty is an abhorrent punishment and pursuing executions in the middle of a pandemic further highlights its inherent cruelty.’