Saudi Arabia sentences record number of people to death

In 2019, the desert kingdom put 184 people to death. China, however, still leads the way in executions, killing 251 people last year through a judicial system which has astonishingly high conviction rate.

There is some reason to be cheerful, however. The global execution rate has decreased by 5 percent from 2018. That number now stands at 657, the lowest recorded number in ten years.

Despite this, this figure does not include China's true number, which is considered to be much higher (possibly in the thousands) and kept has a highly classified state secret.

North Korea and Vietnam are also guilty of attempting to hide their true figure.

Saudi Arabia is using the death penalty increasingly as a means of expressing their judicial, and even political, rigidity. They executed 178 men and six women in 2019—over half of whom where foreign nationals.

Most of these related to drugs or murder offences, but in some cases the Saudi government uses execution as a way to clamp down on political dissidents.