International

On November 7, Chinese media report­ed that for­mer pri­ma­ry school prin­ci­pal Zhang Longji was exe­cut­ed via lethal injec­tion for rap­ing five girls, age 8 – 12, and sex­u­al­ly molest­ing 17 girls, age 8 – 14. Sun Deshun, for­mer pres­i­dent of China CITIC Bank Corporation Limited, who was con­vict­ed of accept­ing $1 bil­lion yuan ($137 mil­lion) in bribes, was giv­en a sus­pend­ed death sen­tence by the Intermediate People’s Court in Jinan on November 10. If no new crimes are com­mit­ted dur­ing the two-year pro­ba­tion, then Mr. Sun’s sen­tence could be com­mut­ed to life with­out parole. According to…

On October 23, 2023, 38 indi­vid­u­als were sen­tenced to death for the mob killing of Jamal Ben Ismail, who had been mis­tak­en­ly iden­ti­fied as the arson­ist respon­si­ble for the August 2021 fires that killed 90 peo­ple in the north­west region. Despite the death sen­tences, all pris­on­ers will be resen­tenced to life impris­on­ment due to the nation­wide mora­to­ri­um in place since 1993 when the last exe­cu­tions occurred. 

October 10, 2023 marked the 21^st World Day Against the Death Penalty. Regarding this year’s theme, ​“The Death Penalty, an Irreversible Torture,” Raphaël Chenuil Hazan, exec­u­tive direc­tor of France-based abo­li­tion­ist group EPCM, said ​“Today, we no longer need to demon­strate to any­one that the death penal­ty is a sophis­ti­cat­ed form of tor­ture, both in the phase of sen­tenc­ing or inves­ti­ga­tion (where phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture is often used to obtain con­fes­sions), where the ele­ments of a fair tri­al are often unfor­tu­nate­ly not met, and dur­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly unbear­able wait for…

On October 10, 2023, the Embassy of France in Washington, D.C. will host open­ing night of ​‘C’est la vie? Restoring Awareness on Capital Punishment through Art,’ in con­junc­tion with sev­er­al oth­er mem­bers of the European Union. The event ​“will fea­ture the work of death row inmates, and some of whose sen­tences have been over­turned, and a dis­cus­sion on the influ­ence that art has had on their lives.” With the European Union Delegation, Witness to Innocence, and Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort, the French Embassy, along with the embassies of…

On August 4, a South Korean nation­al con­vict­ed of drug-traf­fick­ing was exe­cut­ed in China, accord­ing to South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who added dur­ing a press con­fer­ence that this exe­cu­tion was ​“unre­lat­ed to the cur­rent bilat­er­al rela­tions” between the two nations. This was the first time a South Korean nation­al was exe­cut­ed in China for drug-traf­fick­ing since 2014, when four were executed. 

In the August 2023 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, speaks with Dr. Roya Boroumand (pic­tured), Executive Director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran. A spe­cial­ist in Iran’s post-World War 2 his­to­ry, Dr. Boroumand pro­vides his­tor­i­cal con­text for ongo­ing events and dis­cuss­es the cur­rent increase in executions.

Human rights advo­cates are crit­i­ciz­ing the Singapore government’s plan to exe­cute more death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers con­vict­ed of non-vio­lent drug offens­es. Singapore has so far hanged 16 peo­ple since resum­ing state exe­cu­tions in March last year, and all of those exe­cut­ed were low- to mid-lev­el drug offend­ers con­vict­ed of traf­fick­ing amounts of drugs that would cur­rent­ly result in rel­a­tive­ly small pun­ish­ments in the UK and US. There is wide­spread pub­lic sup­port for use of the death penal­ty as an effec­tive pol­i­cy for reduc­ing drug traf­fick­ing in Singapore. In the U.S., one pres­i­den­tial can­di­date supports…

On July 25, 2023, Ghana’s par­lia­ment vot­ed to abol­ish the death penal­ty, mak­ing Ghana the 124^th nation world­wide and the 29^th African nation to do so. Although the death penal­ty remains in the con­sti­tu­tion for acts of trea­son, the new law removes the death penal­ty as pos­si­ble pun­ish­ment for mur­der, geno­cide, pira­cy, and smug­gling. The cur­rent 176 death row pris­on­ers, includ­ing six women, are expect­ed to have their sen­tences com­mut­ed to life in prison. Last year sev­en peo­ple were sen­tenced to death despite Ghana not hav­ing car­ried out an execution…

A total of 68 exe­cu­tions have occurred in Saudi Arabia this year, with more than 20 exe­cu­tions relat­ing to ter­ror­ism charges occur­ring since ear­ly May, accord­ing to Agence France-Presse. On July 3, five men, includ­ing one Egyptian nation­al, were exe­cut­ed for a dead­ly attack on a house of wor­ship in the Al-Ahsa gov­er­norate, result­ing in five dead and sev­er­al injured. On June 25, two Yemeni nation­als were exe­cut­ed on ter­ror­ism charges, and on June 12, three Saudi men were exe­cut­ed for the killing of a secu­ri­ty offi­cer and ter­ror­ism charges.

On March 23, Zimbabwe’s par­lia­ment passed a new ​“Patriotic Bill” which car­ries the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a death sen­tence for non-vio­lent crimes in vio­la­tion of the ​“most seri­ous crimes” inter­na­tion­al legal stan­dard. The law will pun­ish cit­i­zens whose activ­i­ties ​“will­ful­ly dam­age the sov­er­eign­ty and nation­al inter­est of Zimbabwe,” includ­ing boy­cotts, sanc­tions, and any act con­sid­ered ​“sub­ver­sion” by the state. Depending on the offense, pun­ish­ments include a loss of cit­i­zen­ship, heavy fines, impris­on­ment, and the death penal­ty – although the coun­try has not exe­cut­ed any­one since 2005 and had pre­vi­ous­ly indi­cat­ed a…