China executed '2,400' people in 2013

 

Telegraph.co.uk

Tuesday 21 October 2014

 

 

China executed '2,400' people in 2013

Dui Hua Foundation says China executed 2,400 people last year, and falling total over past decade will likely end in 2014 after crackdown in Xinjiang, a restive region in China’s northwest

 

The Chinese government regards the number of prisoners executed a state secret Photo: Gavin Hellier/Alamy

by Nicola Davison, Shanghai

12:11PM BST 21 Oct 2014

China is thought to have executed 2,400 people last year, roughly three times more than the rest of the world's total, according to a US-based pressure group.

The Dui Hua Foundation said the number of people executed in China, which accounts for one-fifth of the world's population, has fallen annually over the past decade or so, down from 12,000 in 2002.

But the organisation predicts the number of people executed this year will halt the downward trend, as a result of the use of capital punishment in anti-terrorism campaigns in Xinjiang, a restive region in China’s northwest, and a nationwide anti-corruption crackdown.

The total number of executions for the rest of the world was 778 people in 2013, according to Amnesty International.

The Chinese government regards the number of prisoners executed as a state secret and has not publicly noted the decline, though officials have occasionally hinted at the trend. In 2012 a deputy health minister cited the fall in executions as contributing to a shortage of transplant organs. Dui Hua bases its estimate on state media reports and intelligence from sources.

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“[China] has executed far fewer people since the power of final review of death sentences was returned to the Supreme People’s Court in 2007,” Dui Hua said in a statement.

John Kamm, executive director, Dui Hua Foundation, told the Telegraph the decline was "the single most positive development in the field of human rights in China in decades".

"Over the past decade 50, 60, 70,000 people have been spared the executioner’s bullet. In terms of human rights that’s pretty significant," he said.

He added that it was extremely unlikely China would abolish the death penalty. "I don’t see that happening frankly in the near future," he said.

In 2013, 39 per cent of death penalty cases reviewed by the Supreme People’s Court were sent back to higher courts for more evidence, according to Dui Hua. In one landmark case earlier this year Li Yan, a survivor of domestic violence sentenced to death for killing her husband, had her verdict overturned.

Since 1983 the Communist Party has launched regular “strike hard” anti-crime campaigns.

A current “anti-terrorism” campaign has seen an upsurge in the number of those condemned to die. Last week a court sentenced 12 people to death in connection with an attack on government buildings in Xinjiang in July in which nearly 100 people died.