AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Hi there - two Amnesty emails in a week, you lucky people...

This time we’ve got death penalty stuff for you. Today we’re publishing the Amnesty International survey of the global use of the death penalty during 2007. Here are the facts:

At least of 1,252 people were executed (in 24 countries) last year

The big five were: China (470+), Iran (317+), Saudi Arabia (143+), Pakistan (135+), USA (42) - the ‘plus’ symbol is a warning, though: because of secrecy, these are only minimum figures. China, for example, refuses to publish execution statistics.

At least 3,347 people were sentenced to death in over 50 countries

There are now up to 27,500 people on death row around the world

Read the full story [link: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=17724] - including about how a man was publicly stoned to death for adultery in Iran, another was beheaded for sorcery in Saudi Arabia, and how the United States released its 124th innocent prisoner from death row since 1973 while recently going a record six months without an execution. Our blog on the issue is here [link: http://blogs.amnesty.org.uk/blogs_entry.asp?eid=1157].

If you agree that the death penalty is cruel, unnecessary and about as relevant to modern justice as burning “witches” or heretics, then the “unofficial moratorium” in the US is encouraging news and Amnesty is now supporting a United Nations initiative to get a worldwide halt on all executions around the world. Read more about the moratorium here [link: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/un-calls-halt-executions-20071218].

Finally, here’s early notice of that fact that Amnesty’s got a brand new viral film about “waterboarding” torture out soon. If you thought our short film about stress and duress torture (Waiting For The Guards [link - http://www.amnesty.org.uk/terror]) was good, then you should really like this new one.

It’s short and really packs a punch. It’s called Stuff Of Life and is, as they say, coming soon! Look out for it and please be ready to recommend it to others if you think it’s any good. We’ll also get you the code so that you can embed it on your site.

Cheerio!

Steve