China ‘executed 2,400’ last year: rights group

The world’s top executioner China put 2,400 people to death last year, a US-based rights group said Tuesday, shedding rare light on a statistic Beijing considers a state secret. The figure was a fall of 20 per cent from 2012, the Dui Hua Foundation said, and a fraction of the 12,000 in 2002. The total for the rest of the world combined was 778 people in 2013, according to campaign group Amnesty International’s annual report earlier this year. Dui Hua said that the recent annual declines in Chinese executions were “likely to be offset” this year, it said, due to factors including the “strike hard” campaign in the violence-wracked largely Muslim region of Xinjiang. The Chinese legal system is tightly controlled by the ruling Communist Party and courts have a near-100 per cent conviction rate in criminal cases.

China currently executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined, but it has executed far fewer people since the power of final review of death sentences was returned to the [Supreme People’s Court] in 2007.

The Dui Hua Foundation

Asia-Pacific