The public remained divided on capital punishment yesterday as proponents of the death penalty questioned Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng’s (王清峰) insistence on suspending executions, while opponents voiced their support.
A number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators and family members of murder victims yesterday accused Wang of being “incompetent.”
At a press conference at the legislature, KMT lawmaker Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) urged Wang to step down over her refusal to approve execution for 44 prisoners on death row.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
“Do you have any idea how many lives these 44 prisoners took away? They killed 71 people. So if Minister Wang were willing to go to hell for the 44 people on death row, who should go to hell for the 71 lives?” Wu asked, adding that Wang should resign and run for legislator if she would like to abolish the death penalty.
Television hostess Pai Ping-ping (白冰冰) was one of those asking Wang to step down. Pai’s 17-year-old daughter Pai Hsiao-yen (白曉燕) was abducted and murdered by gang members in 1997. The main suspect in the case, Chen Chin-hsing (陳進興) was convicted of kidnapping and other charges in January 1998 and executed the following year.
“The punishment nowadays is humane enough, unlike [those who inflicted the harm], who took other peoples’ lives in an inhumane manner,” she told the press conference.
Pai and Lu Chin-te (陸晉德) — father of 10-year-old Lu Cheng (陸正), who was kidnapped in Hsinchu in 1987, but whose body was never found — called Wang incompetent and urged voters to boycott those in favor of abolishing capital punishment in the year-end city and county chief elections and the next presidential poll.
Pai said the death penalty deterred violent crime and a decision to abolish it would harm crime victims.
“If President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government allows Wang’s decision to stand, voters nationwide should boycott this government with their votes,” Pai said.
Meanwhile, human rights activists, lawyers and representatives from various religions voiced their support for Wang’s stay of executions.
“Wang actually made it clear when she was sworn in as the Minister of Justice that she would not approve any execution during her term, so I’m surprised that this position has become so controversial,” Taiwan Law Association chairman and long-time human rights advocate Wellington Koo (顧立雄) told a separate press conference yesterday.
“Therefore, she should not step down for suspending executions. Instead, she should resign if she signs execution orders because she would have broken the pledge she made when she took the job,” he said.
A telephone poll released yesterday by the Chinese-language United Daily News showed that 74 percent of respondents were against abolishing the death penalty, while 12 percent supported Wang. In response to calls from some lawmakers and activists demanding Wang’s resignation, 42 percent of respondents said the announcement rendered the justice minister unfit for duty.
“Whether one should be stripped of his or her right to life cannot be decided by poll,” Koo said when asked to comment on the poll. “Would you allow the life of someone in your family to be taken if a poll showed most people supported that?”
Wen Chin-ko (溫金柯), chairman of Buddhist organization the Modern Pure Land Society, and Catholic priest Willie Ollevier both supported abolishing the death penalty on religious grounds.
Wen said Buddhist texts have mentioned that bodhisattva Avalokitesvara would save those on death row from execution if they truly regretted the crime they committed, while Ollevier said that no one should take any human life that is created by God.
Attorney Lee Sheng-hsiung (李勝雄), on the other hand, said the death penalty left the criminal with no chance to reflect on the crime he or she has committed, “but if we put a criminal in prison for life, he or she has plenty of time to do so, and I think that’s more of a penalty than just taking his or her life.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY VINCENT Y. CHAO
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