Capital Punishment in Asia: The Most Executions in the World

Last Updated: July 2026

Overview

Asia holds both the largest number of executions in the world and the most active abolition movement outside Europe, and the two facts sit in different countries. Seven states in the Asia-Pacific carried out executions in 2025, up from five the year before, with at least 796 new death sentences imposed across the region according to Amnesty International’s annual count. That count excludes China entirely, where execution numbers are a state secret and are believed to run into the thousands.

Movement in 2025 and 2026 went both ways. Vietnam removed the death penalty for eight offences, Malaysia opened a study on full abolition, and Japan and Taiwan resumed executions after multi-year pauses while Singapore’s total reached its highest level in over two decades. This page describes the landscape and does not take a side. It is a maintained reference, revised as laws and circumstances change.

A data note. Amnesty International campaigns for abolition, and its figures are minimums assembled from confirmed cases. China, North Korea, and Vietnam restrict or classify the relevant data, which means the true regional total is unknown by a wide margin and any comparison between Asian countries is a comparison of what each one discloses.

The Competing Frames

Retribution and public opinion. Japan’s justice ministry has cited domestic surveys showing large majorities supporting capital punishment, and similar figures appear in Taiwan, Indonesia, and India. Governments in these countries present retention as democratic responsiveness rather than state preference. Abolitionists respond that survey support drops sharply when respondents are offered life without parole as an alternative, and that the question is rarely put to a referendum anywhere.

Deterrence, especially for drugs. Singapore makes the most explicit deterrence argument of any government in the world, citing its own research and its low drug-use rates, and applies the penalty to trafficking above fixed quantity thresholds. Indonesia, Vietnam, and China use versions of the same argument. Critics point to the absence of comparative evidence that the threshold approach reduces supply, and to the fact that most of those executed are couriers rather than organisers.

Universality against non-interference. European governments and UN bodies routinely issue statements after executions in Singapore and Japan, and both governments respond that criminal justice is a domestic matter and that external commentary reflects a different society’s choices. This is the “Asian values” argument in its narrow, modern form. It is a procedural claim about who gets to judge rather than a substantive defence of the penalty.

Wrongful conviction. The strongest abolitionist argument inside the region is not moral but empirical. Iwao Hakamada spent 46 years on Japanese death row before acquittal, and all five post-war Japanese death row retrials have ended in exoneration. Malaysia’s resentencing exercise reviewed over 900 cases. Supporters of retention respond by defending procedural reform rather than the outcomes themselves.

Political use. Death sentences against former heads of government and political opponents raise a separate question. Bangladesh sentenced former prime minister Sheikh Hasina to death in absentia in 2025, and South Korean prosecutors sought the death penalty for former president Yoon Suk-yeol in January 2026. Whether these are accountability or score-settling is contested in both countries, and the answer is not the same in both.

The Legal Spectrum

Abolitionist in law. The Philippines abolished in 2006, Cambodia, Nepal, Bhutan, Timor-Leste, and Mongolia have all abolished, and Hong Kong and Macau retain no capital offences. Philippine restoration bills have been introduced repeatedly since 2016 without passing.

Abolitionist in practice. South Korea has not executed anyone in over 28 years and holds roughly 60 people under sentence, though it has never legislated abolition. Sri Lanka, Laos, Brunei, and the Maldives also retain the penalty without using it.

Retentionist with rare use. Japan, Taiwan, India, Thailand, and Indonesia execute occasionally, often after long intervals. Japan resumed in June 2025 after a three-year pause; Taiwan carried out its first execution since 2020 in January 2025.

Retentionist with regular use. China, Vietnam, North Korea, Singapore, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh execute routinely, though only Singapore publishes reliable figures.

Mandatory versus discretionary sentencing. Malaysia repealed the mandatory death penalty in 2023 and resentenced most of its death row, leaving under 100 people under sentence by late 2025. Singapore retains presumptions that shift the burden to the accused in trafficking cases. Taiwan’s Constitutional Court struck down one mandatory provision in 2024.

Secrecy as policy. China treats execution numbers as a state secret. Japan notifies prisoners on the morning of execution and informs families afterwards. Vietnam classified its figures until 2016 and provides little since. Secrecy is not incidental to how the penalty operates in much of the region.

The Regional Map

China. The world’s leading executioner by a very large margin, with no published data. Capital offences extend beyond murder to drug trafficking, corruption, and a range of economic crimes, though a 2007 reform requiring Supreme People’s Court review of all death sentences is generally credited with reducing the total substantially from its 1990s peak. Death sentences with two-year reprieve, which usually convert to life imprisonment, account for a significant share of capital verdicts.

Japan. Japan resumed executions on 27 June 2025 after nearly three years. The Hakamada case prompted the justice ministry to convene an expert panel on the retrial system in March 2025, and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations has pressed for a parliamentary review of capital punishment itself, which the government has not agreed to. The Death Penalty Project’s analysis of the case argues Japan has not drawn conclusions from its exonerations.

Taiwan and South Korea. Taiwan’s Constitutional Court ruled in September 2024 that the death penalty is constitutional only for the most serious homicides, requiring unanimous professional judge panels, mandatory counsel, and oral argument on final appeal, and barring execution of people with mental disabilities. South Korea’s unofficial moratorium held through 2026, but the prosecution’s request for a death sentence in former president Yoon Suk-yeol’s insurrection trial put the question back into national politics.

Singapore and Malaysia. The two neighbours have moved in opposite directions. Singapore executed 17 people in 2025, 15 for drug offences, the highest total in over twenty years, and continued into 2026 with cases including cannabis trafficking. Malaysia abolished the mandatory penalty in 2023, commuted more than a thousand sentences, and announced a study on full abolition beginning in January 2026.

Mainland Southeast Asia. Vietnam’s National Assembly voted in June 2025 to remove capital punishment for eight offences, including drug trafficking, embezzlement, espionage, and attempting to overthrow the government, commuting existing sentences for those crimes and leaving 19 capital offences. Thailand and Laos rarely execute. Myanmar resumed executions in 2022 after decades and continues to impose death sentences through military tribunals.

Maritime Southeast Asia. Indonesia imposes death sentences regularly, largely for drug offences, and has not executed since 2016, though it has repeatedly signalled it might. Its 2023 criminal code introduced a probationary period after which a death sentence may convert to life, a mechanism with no close parallel elsewhere. The Philippines remains abolitionist under a treaty commitment that would be difficult to reverse.

South Asia. India imposes over a hundred death sentences most years and executes very rarely, with appellate courts commuting the large majority. Pakistan and Bangladesh both have large death row populations, and Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal sentenced Sheikh Hasina to death in absentia in November 2025, a verdict complicated by her presence in India. Afghanistan has resumed public executions under Taliban rule.

Recent Changes

The abolitionist trend in Asia was real between 2006 and 2020. The Philippines abolished, Mongolia abolished, Sri Lanka and South Korea settled into long moratoria, and China’s Supreme People’s Court review cut its own total. Regional analysts wrote about a directional shift.

That reversed partially after 2020. Myanmar resumed executions in 2022, Singapore resumed the same year and has escalated since, Japan and Taiwan both returned to executions in 2025, and the Taliban restored public executions in Afghanistan. The Amnesty count of Asia-Pacific executing states rose from five to seven in a single year.

The countervailing changes are legislative rather than moratorium-based, which may make them more durable. Malaysia’s 2023 reform removed a mandatory sentencing regime and produced over a thousand commutations. Vietnam’s 2025 amendment cut the capital offence list by eight, including drug trafficking, which had been a major driver of its sentences. Neither country abolished, and both are further along a legislative path than any Asian state has been in a decade.

Active Debates

Malaysia’s abolition study. The review announced for January 2026 is the first formal government examination of total abolition by a retentionist Asian state in years. Whether it produces a bill, and whether the 2023 reform’s political coalition survives, is the region’s most consequential open question.

Singapore’s trajectory. Executions continued through the first half of 2026, all for drug offences, drawing repeated statements from EU delegations and UN human rights officials. Singapore’s government has shown no sign of changing course, and the debate is now largely between the government and external critics rather than inside Singaporean politics.

Japan’s retrial review. The justice ministry panel on the retrial system reports into a political environment where the bar association wants a broader examination of capital punishment and the government does not. Whether procedural reform substitutes for the wider debate is the thing to watch.

Political death sentences. The Hasina verdict and the Yoon prosecution have made capital punishment a live question in two countries that had settled it in practice. South Korea’s 28-year moratorium is the specific thing at stake in the second case.

Taiwan’s compliance deadline. The Constitutional Court gave the legislature two years from September 2024 to amend the law on executing people with mental disabilities, which falls due in late 2026 while the court itself has been operating with a reduced bench.

This is a maintained reference page, last updated July 2026. It is revised as laws and circumstances change. Major developments are covered as dated posts in the News section and linked from here.

Discussion Questions

Would you support the death penalty in your own country if the alternative were life without parole?
China’s execution figures are a state secret. What does that secrecy tell you about how the penalty functions there?
Singapore argues its drug executions work. What evidence would change your mind either way?
All five post-war retrials of Japanese death row prisoners ended in acquittal. What should a country conclude from that?
Is there a difference between a court sentencing a criminal to death and a court sentencing a former president?
Vietnam removed drug trafficking from its capital offences without abolishing the penalty. Is partial reform progress or delay?
European governments issue statements after Singapore executions. Does outside criticism help or harm the abolition cause?
Imagine you sit on Malaysia’s 2026 abolition study. What is the first question you would want answered?
South Korea has not executed anyone in 28 years but has never abolished. Why might a government prefer that arrangement?
Most people executed for drug offences in the region are couriers, not organisers. Does that change how you view the policy?