China out-kills the world, says Amnesty

Police parade prisoners during an execution rally on a U.N. anti-drug day in June

By CNN's Marianne Bray in Hong Kong

BEIJING, China -- China has killed more people in the past three months than the rest of the world over the past three years according to Amnesty International.

The group said on Friday that China has put 1,781 people to death in one of its biggest crackdowns on crime in years.

In a bid to show quick results, Chinese authorities may be executing innocent people in speedy trials, the global group says.

While China has used what it calls "Strike Hard" campaigns to clamp down on organized violent crime in the past, the latest campaign has also imposed strict penalties for minor crimes such as pimping, stealing cultural relics and fraud.

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In a macrabe display, prisoners are sentenced in front of crowds reportedly as large as two million people, before being paraded through the streets to execution firing squads in nearby fields or courtyards, according to Chinese media reports.

The most common form of execution in China is a shot to the back of the head.

Amnesty, which opposes the death penalty, has put out its report on China one week before the International Olympic Committee votes on whether Beijing will host the 2008 Summer Olympics, or one of four other cities, including Paris and Toronto.

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The report comes on the same day that U.S. President George W. Bush asked Chinese President Jiang Zemin to treat two U.S.-based academics being held in China fairly.

Critics say Chinese human rights abuses make Beijing unfit to host the games.

But Beijing officials say hosting the Olympics would promote human rights in China. They also argue that political considerations should not be used to judge Beijing's Olympic bid.

"The campaign is nothing short of an execution frenzy, a huge waste of human life," Amnesty says. The human rights group would like to see more effective and humane criminal punishments handed out.

China's Foreign Ministry would not comment on the report, saying it was an internal matter.

Strike hard

Amnesty said its figures of at least 1,781 executions and 2,960 death sentences since the drive was launched in April were tallied from publicly available reports.

In contrast, Amnesty counted 1,751 executions in the rest of the world over the past three years.

But only a fraction of death sentences and executions in China are publicly reported and the actual number of people put to death is far higher, the group said.

Courts are handing out more death sentences during the government's "Strike Hard" campaigns, Catherine Baber, China researcher for Amnesty in Hong Kong, told CNN.

China has a history of "Strike Hard" campaigns. It has held three crackdowns, the first in 1983.

In its latest campaign during 1996, 4,469 people were executed while 6,235 received death sentences, says Baber.

Since 1990, China has executed almost 20,000 people and given death sentences to 29,128, she says, adding this is probably only a small fraction of the total.

While it is unclear how long this crackdown will last, critics say previous clampdowns have not been effective in controlling crime.

No crime exempt

A woman is held by guards at an execution parade.

Separatists, those vying for religious freedoms and business people are not exempt from the latest spree.

In an effort to curb economic crimes before China joins the World Trade Organization, authorities in the prosperous southern province of Guangdong, next to Hong Kong, have executed people for fraud, forging currency and "disrupting the stock market," Amnesty has reported.

China expects to join the rule-making body for world trade by early next year at the latest.

In Xinjiang, a restive western region of China where militant Muslims are fighting Chinese rule, authorities have executed people accused of separatism, the group said.

In Tibet, people who "guide people illegally across borders" have been targeted.