China Leads in Executions by Far

With the number of executions in China last year estimated in the thousands, Amnesty International is calling for more transparency from Beijing on its use of the death penalty. In its scathing annual report on capital punishment worldwide released Tuesday, the group says the official statistics coming out of China "grossly underrepresent" the actual figure and that the total number of executions in China is greater than the number everywhere else combined. "Chinese authorities claim that fewer executions are taking place. If this is true, why won't they tell the world how many people the state put to death?" Amnesty’s interim secretary general said in a statement. Outside of China, the report found that 714 people were executed in 18 countries in 2009, with most coming in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Iran and Iraq accounted for 508 combined. Fifty-eight nations still use the death penalty for ordinary crimes.