Capital punishment in the Philippines

Capital punishment in the Philippines (Filipino: Parusang Kamatayan sa Pilipinas), specifically the death penalty as a form of state-sponsored repression, was introduced and widely practiced by the Spanish East Indies government in the Philippines. A substantial number of Filipino nationalist figures like Mariano Gómez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora (collectively known as GomBurZa ), the Thirteen Martyrs of Cavite (Trece Mártires), the Thirteen Martyrs of Bagumbayan, the Fifteen Martyrs of Bicol (Quince Mártires de Bicolandia), the Nineteen Martyrs of Aklan, and José Rizal were among those executed by the Spanish colonial government.

Numerous Philippine parks, monuments, learning institutions, roads, and local government units are named after José Rizal and those executed by the Spanish as a reminder of colonial atrocities using the death penalty. After the 1946 execution of Imperial Japanese Army General Tomuyuki Yamashita in Los Baños after World War II and the formal establishment of the Third Republic, capital punishment was mainly a deterrent against widespread crime that dominated, until the imposition of Martial Law in 1972.

The Philippines and Cambodia are the only Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states that have abolished the death penalty.