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For Immediate Release
January, 05 2016, 07:45am EDT
Contact:
Reprieve's London office can be contacted on: communications [at] reprieve.org.uk / +44 (0) 207 553 8140.,Reprieve US,, based in New York City, can be contacted on Katherine [dot] oshea [at] reprieve.org
2016: UK Drops Death Penalty Strategy as Executions Spike in Iran, Pakistan & Saudi
Britain has begun the year by abandoning its strategy on the death penalty which had been in place since 2010 - as executions in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan hit record numbers.
Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution of 47 people, including at least four protesters, on 2 January. 2015 saw the kingdom execute at least 157 people, according to estimates by international human rights organization Reprieve - believed to be the highest total for two decades.
LONDON
Britain has begun the year by abandoning its strategy on the death penalty which had been in place since 2010 - as executions in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan hit record numbers.
Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution of 47 people, including at least four protesters, on 2 January. 2015 saw the kingdom execute at least 157 people, according to estimates by international human rights organization Reprieve - believed to be the highest total for two decades.
Meanwhile, Pakistan executed over 300 people since lifting a moratorium on the death penalty in December 2014, and Iran executed nearly 1000 people in 2015. At least 600 of those hanged in Iran last year were convicted of drugs offences, the highest total for 16 years.
The UK Government announced last year that it would not be renewing its Strategy on the Abolition of the Death Penalty in 2016. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) also said it would no longer use the term 'countries of concern' when assessing states' human rights records. China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia - the world's most prolific executioners - were all classified as 'countries of concern' in the FCO's most recent 'Human Rights and Democracy Report' (2014).
Reprieve has also questioned why Saudi Arabia was absent from the list of priority countries in the now-defunct death penalty strategy, despite the inclusion of the other most prolific executioners - Iran, Iraq, China, Pakistan and the USA - as well as a number of other countries, such as Jordan and Morocco, which execute at a far lower rate.
Maya Foa, Director of the death penalty team at international human rights organisation Reprieve said:
"With Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan all executing at a horrific rate, now is not the time for the UK to be abandoning its strategy on the death penalty. Taken alongside the decision to stop classifying serious human rights offenders such as Saudi Arabia as 'countries of concern,' this raises suspicions that a desire to avoid embarrassing Britain's 'allies' has taken precedence over standing up for basic British principles. The Government's softly-softly approach to Saudi Arabia does not seem to be working - it is time for a re-think."
Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay.
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Report Reveals $2 Billion of New Financing by Big Banks for Oil and Gas in the Amazon
"These investments are complicit in genocide: They are killing our culture, our history, and destroying the biodiversity of the Amazon.”
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A day after the Brazilian state-run oil firm Petrobras announced it would begin drilling for oil near the mouth of the Amazon River "immediately" after obtaining a license despite concerns over the impact on wildlife, an analysis on Tuesday revealed that banks have added $2 billion in direct financing for oil and gas in the biodiverse Amazon Rainforest since 2024.
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"Around 1,700 Indigenous people live here, and our survival depends on the forest. We ask that banks such as Itaú, Santander, and Banco do Nordeste stop financing companies that exploit fossil fuels in Indigenous territories."
Devyani Singh, lead researcher for Stand.earth's new bank scorecard on fossil fuel financing, noted that European banks like BNP Paribas and HSBC have "applied more robust policies to protect the sensitive Amazon rainforest than their peers" and have "significantly dropped in financing ranks."
But, said Singh, "no bank has yet brought its financing to zero. Every one of these banks must close the existing loopholes and fully exit Amazon oil and gas without delay.”
More than 80% of the banks' Amazon fossil fuel financing since 2024 has gone to just six oil and gas companies: Petrobras, Canada's Gran Tierra, Brazil's Eneva, oil trader Gunvor, and two Peruvian companies: Hunt Oil Peru and Pluspetrol Camisea.
The companies have been associated with human rights violations and have long been resisted by Indigenous people in the Amazon region, who have suffered from health impacts of projects like the Camisea gas project, a decline in fish and game stocks, and a lack of clean water.
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Stand.earth's report warned that both the Amazon Rainforest—which provides a habitat for 10% of Earth's biodiversity, including many endangered species—and the people who live there are facing "escalating threats" from oil and gas companies and the firms that finance them, with centuries of exploitation driving the forest "toward an ecological tipping point with irreversible impacts that have global consequences."
Oil and gas exploration is opening roads into intact parts of the Amazon and other forests, while perpetuating the new fossil fuel emissions that scientists and energy experts have warned have no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating.
"With warming temperatures, the delicate ecological balance of the Amazon could be upset, flipping it from being a carbon-absorbing rainforest into a carbon-emitting savannah," reads the group's report.
Jonas Mura, chief of the Gavião Real Indigenous Territory in Brazil, said "the noise, the constant truck traffic, and the explosions" from Eneva's projects "have driven away the animals and affected our hunting."
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