U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers took to social media platform X today to criticize a United Nations panel seeking to halt a planned execution in Alabama later this month.

Kenneth Eugene Smith is set to be executed Jan. 25 by nitrogen hypoxia. He would be the first inmate executed by the method, which the Alabama Legislature approved in 2018 but which has never been used by any state.

On Wednesday, a panel of United Nations experts “expressed alarm” over the execution, calling it “an untested method of execution which may subject him to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture.”

Rogers responded in an X post, suggesting the UN focus instead on China

“China unjustly executes thousands per year, including nonviolent offenders, all while committing genocide,” Rogers wrote. ”So naturally, the UN Human Rights Council is focusing their efforts on stopping a humane method of execution on a convicted murderer in Alabama.”

Chinese policies regarding the Uyghur, Muslim minorities, and the people of Tibet have been criticized internationally as a form of genocide. China denies the allegations.

The execution method to be used on Smith would employ a mask to replace breathable air with nitrogen, causing death from lack of oxygen.

The UN panel warned that “experimental executions” will likely violate the UN convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment, to which the United States is a member.

The expert panel called on state and federal authorities to halt the execution, pending a review of procedures. It cited the “possibility of grave suffering which execution by pure nitrogen inhalation may cause.”

Smith was twice convicted by juries for the murder-for-hire of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett in her home in Colbert County in 1988. Sennett was a pastor’s wife who was beaten and stabbed. Smith, one of two men convicted in the crime, confessed to his role.

A jury voted 11-1 to recommend a sentence of life without parole after Smith’s conviction in 1996, but the sentencing judge overrode the jury recommendation and sentenced him to death.

The Alabama Department of Corrections tried to execute Smith by lethal injection in 2022 but called it off when authorities could not connect the required two intravenous lines to him.