BEIJING - China should suspend judicial executions as a goodwill gesture ahead of next summer's Olympics, a human rights group said Tuesday.
The call by Human Rights Watch is the latest attempt to use the Olympics to push Beijing to change its human rights practices or international relations.
China is thought to execute more people each year than the rest of the world combined, including those convicted of non-violent crimes such as fraud.
"As the world focuses on China's poor human rights record in the run-up to the Olympics, the Chinese government could avoid further embarrassment by making a bold step to address its position as the world's leading executioner of its own citizens,'' Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
"Because of structural deficiencies in the conduct of trials in China, no one executed in China today receives a fair trial in line with international standards,'' he said.
The appeal comes as China has attempted to reform its capital punishment system following reports last year of executions of wrongly convicted people and criticism that lower courts arbitrarily impose the death sentence.
An amendment to China's capital punishment law, enacted in November, restored to the Supreme People's Court the sole right to approve all death sentences, ending a 23-year-old practice of allowing provincial courts alone to sign off on executions.
China doesn't officially release death sentence figures. Amnesty International says China executed at least 1,770 people in 2005 -- about 80 per cent of the world's total. But the true number is thought to be many times higher.
Human Rights Watch said China should cut the number of crimes eligible for the death penalty, make public the number of people executed or waiting on death row, and improve trial and appeal procedures to ensure they meet international minimum standards of fairness.
The Olympics have been used to try to push China on a range of issues. Many countries have said over the last week that Beijing should use its influence with the ruling junta in Myanmar to help resolve the crisis there.
Beijing is also under fire for a perceived lack of action on pushing the Sudan government to do more to end the crisis in rebellious Darfur province. Energy-hungry China buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil output.
