World-wide,  people are still being hanged, shot or gased to death, poisoned by lethal injection, stoned to death, decapitated or executed by other means.

 In the year 2012 at least 682 human beings plus ‘thousands of people’ in China, according to numbers of Amnesty International, were executed. And the figure for sentenced to death was at least 1722 people again plus ‘thousands’ in China. Amnesty International does not give any numbers concerning China since the country still treats the death penalty as a state secret and there are no official numbers concerning executions and death sentences.

And countries are still very creative when it comes to offenses punishable by death: These reach from murder, rape, kidnapping, treason, … to things like apostasy, adultery (which in some countries includes getting raped!) or being homosexual. 

China was followed by the countries Iran (at least 314 executions), Iraq (at least 129), Saudi-Arabia (at least 79), USA (43), Yemen (at least 28), Sudan (at least 19), Afghanistan (14), Gambia (9), Japan (7), North Corea and Somalia (each at least 6), Palestinian Territories and Taiwan (each 6), etc. ....

The only European country still using capital punishment is Belarus. Since 1991, the year of the accession of power of the current gouvernment, assumingly 400 people were executed in this nation. In 2009 Belarus did not carry out any executions, therefore all of Europe was free of executions in this year. Nevertheless already in March 2010 two people were executed in Belarus.

Today some 140 nations worldwide have abolished the death penalty or at least have not carried out any execution in the past 10 years.  But unfortunately there are still 58 countries and territories which keep capital punishment in their law and carried out executions in the past 10 years. 

In the following we want to give you a short overview over some of the countries which had most executions in the recent years.