Thread: Death penalty for Metro bombers in Belarus

Originally Posted by Eric C.

These are REALLY SCARY numbers for a small European country.

Belarus is average size by European standards, neither large nor small.

Compare with:

Number of people in Saudi Arabia: 27 mil. (in '06)
Number of executions in 2006: 38

Number of people in the Singapore: 3.8 mil. (in '06)
Number of executions in 2006: 8

Not heard anyone complaining about executions there - but wait! One's got oil and is selling it to the powers to be in their preferred way... The other is a fininancial and shopping hub of Asia with good capitalist credentials - so they are exused too, right Eric?

Originally Posted by Hanna

Ok the comparison:

Number of people in Belarus: 9 mil
Number of executions in 2006: 9 executions

Number of people in the USA: 300 mil. (in '06)
Number of executions in 2006: 53

Ok - actually Belarus executes more people per capita per year than the USA, so my idea that the USA might be worse in this respect was wrong.

Number of people in Saudi Arabia: 27 mil. (in '06)
Number of executions in 2006: 38

Number of people in the Singapore: 3.8 mil. (in '06)
Number of executions in 2006: 8

I would rather compare how many people were murdered in these countries per million ppl and that with the lowest number would be the best in this competition. Anybody knows such statistics?

We should not compare Belarus with all states of the USA, because in many of them there is no capital punishment.
Let's compare Belarus with Oklahoma, infamous for its high executions per capita numbers.

Number of people in Belarus: 9 mil
Number of executions 1985-2010: 379 executions (the highest estimate which I found on Wikipedia)
Executions per year: 15,16
Executions per year per million people (rough estimate using current population): 1,68

Number of people in Oklahoma: 3,5 mil
Number of executions in 1976-2011: 96
Executions per year: 2,74
Executions per year per million people (rough estimate using current population): 0,78

We can see that Belarus scores 2 times higher than Oklahoma.
But note that number of executions in Belarus is declining sharply in the last decade, so I think it is no worse than Oklahoma now.

Now to Singapore.
Number of people in Singapore: 5 mil
Number of executions in 1991-2001: 410
Executions per year: 41
Executions per year per million people (rough estimate using current population): 8,2

OMG, Singapore scores 5 times higher than Belarus.

Number of people in Saudi Arabia: 27 mil
Number of executions in 2007-2010: 345
Executions per year: 86,25
Executions per year per million people (rough estimate using current population): 3,2

So we may order these countries like this:
Oklahoma (USA) < Belarus < Saudi Arabia < Singapore