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Amnesty International has released a report pegging China as the world's leader in capital punishment. The group says China still executes more people in one year than all other nations combined. Here's that story.
Amnesty International released its annual death penalty report on Monday (March 28). It names China as the world leader in capital punishment.
The report says China is believed to have executed several thousand of its citizens in 2010. But it doesn't list an exact number—because the regime doesn't share that figure—calling it a state secret.
The Chinese regime did issue a new law this year that reduced the number of crimes punishable by death. It's now 55, down from 68.
But the author of the Amnesty report cautions that such a move won't necessarily mean fewer executions.
[Roseanne Rife, Author of Amnesty International Report]:
"A lot of those crimes that were cut were sort of economic crimes or white-collar crimes, if you will, that we hadn't seen, we hadn't recorded executions for those crimes recently in China. So we really don't know if that is going to have an impact on the use of the death sentence in China. What we've continuously been calling on and even more so in the last two years is for China to publicly release those figures."
The Chinese regime's use of the death penalty has made big headlines in recent years—especially when executing foreign nationals for drug trafficking. Activists have often criticized Chinese courts for lack of due process.
On March 23, China's Department of Foreign Affairs announced that it would execute three Filipinos convicted of bringing heroin into China. It comes despite the Philippine government's calls for leniency.
