Amnesty counted the suicide bombers

The states execute 20 thousand people a month before the publication of the annual report of the largest independent human rights organization "International Amnesty" (AI) of its general secretary Irin Kahn notified the world that today more than 20 thousand people are awaiting execution in state prisons. This figure exceeds the number of victims of terrorist attacks and local military conflicts over the past year. It is many times larger than the number of destroying American and Russian soldiers annually. It is inferior only to the number of victims of the tsunami, earthquakes in Iran and the Iraqis killed during the war.

According to AI, in 2005, the authorities notified 2148 executions in 22 countries. According to the experience of previous years, Amnesty experts claim that only the peak of the iceberg is visible: in many countries they are secretly executed. They continue to be sentenced to executions in 53 countries. In 2005, 5186 sentences were issued.

Leadership in the number of executions belongs to China (94% of the executed - 1770 people), Iran, Saudi Arabia and the USA. Chinese experts are convinced that at least 8 thousand people have been executed in China. The official permission to use the executed organs for transplantation makes the death penalty in China a problem without solving.

The United States - the absolute leader in the execution of minors - only in March 2005 abandoned such a practice. The last country where adolescents are executed is, according to AI, Iran. In 2005, eight minors were deprived of their lives.

In the preliminary report, AI specially called two countries, where there is a sufficient “confession” to the death sentence - Japan and Uzbekistan. And there and there are especially cruel torture. In the final report, this list will be expanded.

In Saudi Arabia, Kan emphasized, the investigation against a foreigner can be conducted without a translation, the prisoner is leading to execution, not notifying him either about the verdict or his execution.

AI gives a list of execution methods, not giving them ethical assessments: decapitation (Saudi Arabia, Iraq), electric chair (USA), hanging (Egypt, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Pakistan, Singapore), deadly injection (China, Thailand, USA), execution (Belarusian, Uzbekistan, Taiwan, Somali), Brighting) stones (Afghanistan, Iran).

At the same time, AI insists that numerous scientific studies have established a lack of communication between the severity of punishment and the growth of crime.

On the example of Canada, the opposite trend is visible: over 30 years since the death penalty, crime decreased by 44%. Therefore, the rejection of the death penalty, legal or actual (as in Russia), supported by 89 countries, AI considers the right decision. The struggle against the death penalty is the priority task of this organization for 46 years.

04/26/2006 / Nadezhda Kevorkov, the material was published in the newspaper No. 74 dated 04/27/2006.