Death sentences are down slightly, but capital punishment is used to fight political dissent

The Amnesty International report on the application of the death penalty indicates a slight decrease in cases falling from 690 cases in 2018 to 654 in 2019, this is a percentage figure which stands at five percent; a value that is certainly positive, but which is also a percentage number that is still too low and, above all, indicates that the definitive abolition of this penalty is still far away. Although the majority of the world's nations that have abolished capital punishment from their judicial systems are 106, in other 142 countries, although existing on paper, the death penalty is no longer enforced in practice. Twenty nation states remain and continue to use the death sentence as the maximum penalty in their systems. For some twenty states they are a minority, and in fact, the mathematical data says so, but, relative to an evaluation of merit, it is still a considerable number; if you want to consider the importance of some of these states worldwide, the assessment cannot be of concern. Of course every human life is important, but the fact that the death sentences take place in countries that propose themselves as leading nations on the world stage, such as the USA and China, takes on a conflicting judgment about the reconciliation of the purposes of great power with respect for rights . Not that this element represents a novelty, but, if anything, a tragic confirmation. It must be said, rather, that it is becoming clear that the application of the death penalty in more and more states is characterized by greater secrecy, which signals the desire not to clash with public opinions, both internal and international, more and more hostile to this practice. A disturbing aspect is represented by the increase in the application of the death penalty, not common crimes, but for political crimes: the use of the physical elimination of opponents in power is becoming a constant often combined with torture and unfair trials. This trend is present, as a common fact, in all those countries where there has been an increase in cases of the death penalty, these are state systems where democracy is absent and which have intensified the fight against internal dissent with increasingly violent methods . In fact, China (thousands of cases), Iran (at least 251), Saudi Arabia (184), Iraq (at least 100) and Egypt (at least 32) are the five nations that have used the death penalty most, however the data of the Chinese country they are not precise precisely because Beijing considers them a state secret, thus avoiding to advertise on the world stage a figure that would contribute to worsening the image of China in the world. Even on the official data of the other regimes there are significant doubts on the numbers communicated, which are estimated as lower than the real ones, with reasons similar to those that are presumed for China. Other states such as North Korea and Vietnam keep the number of death sentences secret. What stands out is the political use of the sentence to capital punishment as a means of contrasting dissent, this can also take on a meaning of difficulty for the regimes that insist on these practices, but the worrying fact is the continuous relationship, however obliged, of the states Western countries with these countries, which gradually move away from civil rights and which are not sanctioned in the name of economic convenience. If you want to talk about improvements, on the other hand, there is the fact that executions have been at least ten years, thanks to the decreases that have occurred in countries like Japan and Singapore and the absence of executions in Afghanistan for the first time. Suspensions should also be registered in Taiwan and Thailand. Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Malaysia and Gambia. The United States itself reports New Hampshire, as the twenty-first federal state where the death penalty is no longer in force and the case of California, where there are the greatest number of death row inmates awaiting execution, which, through its governor, announced a moratorium.