execution as a weapon to instill fear, suppress dissent
In 2025, humanity crossed a grim threshold: 2,707 people were put to death by their governments, the highest recorded toll in 44 years, with Iran alone accounting for four out of every five executions. Amnesty International's annual reckoning reveals not merely a statistical surge but a deliberate political instrument — states wielding execution to silence dissent, punish poverty, and consolidate power. Against this tide, 113 nations have abolished capital punishment entirely, a slow arc of moral progress that has not yet bent fast enough to save the 25,000 still waiting on death rows around the world.
- A 19-year-old wrestler hanged for attending a protest captures in one life the scale of what Iran's execution machine consumed in 2025 — 2,159 people, a pace that more than doubled in the second half of the year after military strikes intensified the regime's crackdown.
- Executions for drug offenses doubled globally to 1,257, a surge Amnesty International links directly to hardening punitive policies that fall heaviest on the poor and on ethnic minorities.
- The acceleration is not confined to Iran: the United States nearly doubled its executions, Kuwait tripled, and four countries that had effectively stopped killing — Japan, Taiwan, the UAE, and South Sudan — resumed the practice in 2025.
- Amnesty International warns that capital punishment has become a tool of authoritarian consolidation, used to instill fear, suppress dissent, and demonstrate state dominance over marginalized communities.
- Quiet resistance persists: Alabama issued its first-ever commutation for a Black death-row prisoner, and Gambia, Liberia, Nigeria, and Lebanon have each begun legislative moves toward abolition.
- With more than 25,000 people awaiting execution across roughly 50 countries, the distance between the world's worst impulses and its better ones has rarely felt so measurable — or so urgent.
Saleh Mohammadi had won a bronze medal at an international wrestling tournament eighteen months before Iranian authorities hanged him on March 19th, 2025. He was nineteen. He had participated in January protests where two police officers died. His execution was not exceptional — it was part of a system that put 2,159 people to death in Iran that year, accounting for eighty percent of all recorded executions on the planet.
Globally, 2,707 people were executed in 2025, a seventy-eight percent increase from the year before, according to Amnesty International. To find a deadlier year, you must go back to 1981. Beatriz Martos, Amnesty's death penalty expert, called the numbers 'chilling.' They are also conservative: China, North Korea, and Vietnam classify execution data as state secrets.
Iran's pace accelerated sharply after Israeli and American military strikes in June. In the first half of the year, 654 people were executed; in the second half, 1,505 — many in revolutionary courts, without adequate legal representation, on charges of treason or espionage newly made capital offenses. A large share were convicted of drug crimes, a category that Martos noted disproportionately ensnares the poor and ethnic minorities. Globally, drug-related executions more than doubled to 1,257 across five countries.
Iran was not alone in moving in this direction. The United States nearly doubled its executions to 47. Kuwait tripled. Four countries that had effectively abandoned the practice — Japan, Taiwan, the UAE, and South Sudan — resumed it. Amnesty International's secretary general Agnès Callamard described execution as a weapon authoritarian states use to suppress dissent and demonstrate power over the vulnerable. Israel, recording no executions in 2025, nonetheless passed a law permitting automatic death sentences for Palestinians who kill Israelis.
Yet the longer arc holds some resistance. When Amnesty began its campaign against capital punishment in 1977, only 16 countries had abolished it; today, 113 have. In Alabama, a governor commuted the sentence of Rocky Myers — sixty-three, intellectually disabled, Black, and on death row for over thirty years — the first such commutation in that state's history. Gambia, Liberia, Nigeria, and Lebanon have each begun formal abolition processes. In sub-Saharan Africa, death sentences rose but actual executions fell. These are small counterweights against a rising tide that leaves more than 25,000 people waiting in roughly fifty countries for a fate that the world has not yet decided, collectively, to abandon.
Saleh Mohammadi was nineteen years old when they hanged him. The Iranian wrestler had won a bronze medal at the Saytev Cup in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, just eighteen months before his execution on March 19th. He was among the first three prisoners put to death for their role in January protests where two police officers were killed. His death was not unusual in Iran. It was routine.
In 2025, Iran executed 2,159 people—eighty percent of all recorded executions on the planet. Globally, 2,707 people were put to death that year, according to Amnesty International's annual report on capital punishment. The number represents a seventy-eight percent jump from 2024, when 1,518 executions were documented. To find a year with more deaths by execution, you have to go back forty-four years, to 1981, when 3,191 people were executed worldwide. Beatriz Martos, Amnesty International's death penalty expert, called the increase "chilling."
These figures are conservative estimates. China executes thousands annually but classifies the data as state secret. North Korea and Vietnam do the same. Among countries with transparent records, Saudi Arabia follows Iran with at least 356 executions, Yemen with 51, and the United States with 47. But the acceleration in Iran tells a particular story. In the first half of 2025, Iranian authorities executed 654 people. In the second half, they killed more than double that—1,505. The spike began after Israeli and American military strikes on Iran in June. "All in revolutionary courts, without trusted lawyers or minimal procedural guarantees," Martos said of those condemned in the second half of the year.
Many faced charges of high treason, espionage, or cooperation with hostile foreign powers—crimes made capital offenses by a legal change in summer 2025. But a substantial portion were convicted of drug-related crimes. "It criminalizes people with fewer economic resources, who in the Islamic Republic coincide with ethnic minorities," Martos explained. Globally, 1,257 executions were carried out for drug offenses across five countries in 2025—more than double the previous year. Amnesty International attributed the surge to a hardening of punitive approaches in the war on drugs.
Iran was not alone in expanding capital punishment. The United States nearly doubled its executions, from 25 to 47. Singapore increased from 9 to 17. Kuwait nearly tripled, from 6 to 17. Egypt rose from 13 to 23. Four countries that had effectively abandoned execution—Japan, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, and South Sudan—resumed it in 2025. Amnesty International observed that nations employing capital punishment are those where authoritarian practices flourish. These states, according to the organization's secretary general Agnès Callamard, use execution "as a weapon to instill fear, suppress dissent, and demonstrate the power state institutions hold over disadvantaged people and marginalized communities."
Israel, though it recorded no executions in 2025, recently passed a law allowing automatic death sentences for Palestinians who kill Israelis. In the United States, President Trump has restored capital punishment to Washington and reintroduced firing squads for federal executions, framing execution as a solution to crime despite evidence showing no correlation between executions and reduced criminality.
Yet there are counterweights. In 1977, when Amnesty International began its campaign against capital punishment, only 16 countries had abolished it entirely. Today, 113 have done so. In Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey commuted Rocky Myers's death sentence to life imprisonment—the first commutation for a Black person in that state's history. Myers, sixty-three and intellectually disabled, had spent more than thirty years on death row for a 1991 murder conviction. In sub-Saharan Africa, though death sentences rose seventy-four percent, actual executions fell forty-seven percent. Gambia, Liberia, and Nigeria have begun legislative processes toward abolition, as has Lebanon, where the cabinet backed an abolition bill. These moves offer small resistance to a rising tide. More than 25,000 people currently await execution in roughly fifty countries worldwide.
Notable Quotes
It's a chilling increase— Beatriz Martos, Amnesty International death penalty expert
A weapon to instill fear, suppress dissent, and demonstrate the power state institutions hold over disadvantaged people and marginalized communities— Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International secretary general
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does Iran's execution rate matter so much more than the others? Is it just the scale?
Scale is part of it—eighty percent of recorded global executions in one country is staggering. But what matters more is the acceleration and the method. After June, they didn't just execute more people; they did it faster, with fewer protections, and for crimes that weren't capital offenses before.
You mean they changed the law to make more things punishable by death?
Exactly. They expanded what counts as high treason and espionage. But the real shift was drug offenses. Suddenly, people with addiction or poverty became eligible for execution. It's not random—it targets ethnic minorities and the economically vulnerable.
That's different from executing political prisoners, though, isn't it?
On the surface, yes. But Martos points out that the criminalization itself is political. When you execute the poor and marginalized for drug crimes while the wealthy avoid those courts, you're using law as a tool of control. It's the same weapon, different framing.
The U.S. numbers jumped too. Is Trump's return to execution part of a global pattern?
It's part of the same pattern Amnesty sees everywhere: authoritarian consolidation. When governments feel threatened—by dissent, by instability, by loss of control—they reach for execution. It's a show of force. Trump frames it as crime prevention, but the data shows executions don't reduce crime. It's theater.
But 113 countries have abolished it. Doesn't that suggest the opposite trend?
It does, which is why Martos calls those the lights in the darkness. The long arc bends toward abolition. But right now, in 2025 and into 2026, the countries that still execute are accelerating. It's a shrinking club becoming more brutal.