MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, Amnesty International published a report dubbed Death Sentences and Executions 2016. While the report showed a 37-percent decrease in executions worldwide, compared to 2015, it stressed that such countries as Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China were among top five executors.
"The Chinese government has recognized it is a laggard in terms of openness and judicial transparency, but it persists in actively concealing the true scale of executions. The Chinese government uses partial disclosures and unverifiable assertions to claim progress in reducing the number of executions yet at the same time maintains near absolute secrecy. This is deliberately misleading," Secretary General of Amnesty International Salil Shetty said.
According to the watchdog, the Chinese authorities classified information related to death penalty as secret, therefore, state database did not contain any data on most of the executions. In particular, Amnesty discovered that in 2014-2016 China executed at least 931 people, according to media reports, while only 85 of them were registered in the database.
The human rights organization urged Beijing once again to review its policy to make it more transparent.
