By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent, Worthy News
BEIJING (Worthy News) – Advocacy group Amnesty International, which campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty, has named China as the world’s “lead executioner.”
Amnesty International’s annual report on global capital punishment estimated that thousands were put to death in the Communist-run nation in 2024.
The watchdog said China’s secretive practices, combined with ongoing religious persecution, set it apart even from countries with record-high confirmed execution counts.
Amnesty recorded at least 1,518 executions globally in 2024 — the highest number in a decade and a 32 percent increase from the previous year.
The figure does not include executions in China, North Korea, and Vietnam, where the death penalty is widely believed to be used extensively, but government secrecy reportedly prevents verification.
“China has yet to publish any figures on the death penalty; however, available information indicates that each year thousands of people are executed and sentenced to death,” Amnesty complained in its annual report on executions, seen by Worthy News. “Amnesty International renews its call on the Chinese authorities to publish information on the use of the death penalty in China.”
In 2009, Amnesty stopped publishing its estimated figures on the use of the death penalty in China, saying the decision “reflected concerns about how the Chinese authorities misrepresented Amnesty International’s numbers.”
INFORMATION RESTRICTIONS
The group said it “always made clear that the figures it was able to publish on China were significantly lower than the reality, because of the restrictions on access to information.”
China’s death penalty system, coupled with its persecution of minority Christians and other religious minorities such as Uyghur Muslims and Falun Gong practitioners, places it “at the center of global human rights concerns,” activists say.
However, Amnesty has also expressed concerns about the United States and other countries still carrying out death sentences.
Additionally, the advocacy group noticed that besides China, the death penalty remained “a prominent tool” used by “several governments to exert control on the population and stifle dissent.”
Autocratic leaderships in, for instance, Iran and Saudi Arabia targeted especially “human rights defenders, protesters, dissidents, and political opponents.”
Amnesty added that the use of the death penalty is “having a disproportionate impact on those belonging to ethnic or religious minorities and from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.” Christians are among those being targeted, documented by Worthy News and Amnesty investigators.
“Among other examples, the Iranian authorities used the death penalty to punish individuals who had challenged, or were perceived as having challenged, the Islamic Republic establishment and its politico-religious ideologies during the Woman Life Freedom uprising of September-December 2022,” added Amnesty’s report.
‘WEAPONIZING’ EXECUTION
“The Saudi authorities continued to weaponize the death penalty to silence political dissent and punish nationals from the country’s Shi’a minority who supported ‘anti-government’ protests between 2011 and 2013,” Amnesty stressed.
However, these were not isolated incidents. “Resort to the death penalty for broadly defined ‘security’ or terrorism related offences was significant across several countries,” Amnesty wrote.
The group is pleased that Zimbabwe has abolished the death penalty, a widely expected move in a country that last carried out the punishment nearly two decades ago.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who once faced the death penalty himself in the 1960s during the war of independence, approved the law in December after a bill passed through Parliament.
Zimbabwe had about 60 prisoners on death row, and the new law spared them. “This Act [on abolition] is more than a legal reform; it is a statement of our commitment to justice and humanity […] We recognise the importance of rehabilitation and the need to move away from retribution,” said Ziyambi Ziyambi, Minister of Justice and Parliamentary Affairs of Zimbabwe.
Amnesty hopes more countries, including China, will follow that example.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
More Worthy News
The U.S. Justice Department came under mounting pressure to release all files related to deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, despite strong opposition from the White House and signs that U.S. President Donald J. Trump is reluctant to make the documents fully public.
France paid an emotional tribute Thursday to the 130 people killed ten years ago during a night of coordinated attacks by Islamic State extremists who targeted cafés, restaurants, and the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.
The Trump administration on Nov. 13 finalized a sweeping rollback of Biden-era restrictions on oil and gas development in Alaska, restoring access to more than 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (NPR-A) in a move officials say will bolster U.S. energy security and revive North Slope communities.
The United States on Thursday urged the UN Security Council to support Washington’s draft resolution establishing an International Stabilization Force (ISF) to secure postwar Gaza and guide the territory into a future “free from Hamas.” The measure — a central pillar of President Donald Trump’s broader Middle East peace framework — has been crafted with input from Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.
The U.S. State Department officially designated four foreign Antifa groups as foreign terrorist organizations, nearly two months after President Donald Trump designated Antifa a domestic terror organization.
The Temple Institute in Jerusalem issued an extensive clarification on Monday following widespread misinformation concerning recent reports about a red heifer and the production of ritual ashes—an act central to biblical purity laws and, for many religious observers, deeply symbolic in the context of prophetic events.
The United States is moving aggressively to secure UN Security Council authorization for the new International Stabilization Force (ISF) in Gaza, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying Wednesday that Washington is “optimistic” that the draft resolution will advance within days — paving the way for deployment at the start of 2026.