Category: Africa/Asia

“There is a new trend against the death penalty that is something new to the world,” Mario Marazziti, spokesman for Sant’Egidio, said, according to Reuters. Marazziti says that 56 countries continue to execute people, while 141 countries do not use the death penalty, including 93 that had formally abolished it. Even China, one of the countries where execution is most common, told judges in February to limit the use of the penalty. Amnesty International estimates that at least 7,000 people were sentenced to death in China in 2008 and 1,718 executed that year.