An Amnesty International report released on Tuesday listed Taiwan as one of the 59 countries that still have the death penalty and anti-capital punishment activists yesterday urged the government to follow the global trend and abolish the practice.
The report said that more than 2,300 people were executed in 25 countries worldwide, while almost 9,000 others were sentenced to death last year.
“Overall, 138 countries around the world have abolished the death penalty — 92 that have completed abandoned it, 10 that abolished capital punishment during peacetime and 36 that have had no executions during the past 10 years,” Amnesty International Taiwan director Wang Hsing-chung (王興中) said. “Even among the 59 countries that still use the death penalty, only 25 of them had executions in 2008.”
“The figures show that ending the death penalty is a global trend,” Wang said.
Lin Hsin-yi (林欣怡), director of the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty, urged the government to follow suit.
“The government says it’s not the right time to abolish the death penalty, because most people still support it,” Lin said. “But if we look at examples in other countries, opinion is against abolishing the death penalty, but other governments still abolished it.”
Lin said it often takes a decisive political leader, better crime prevention policies and good substitutes to the death penalty to win popular support for the policy. She said popular support for abolishing the death penalty would increase in the long run.
Lin said that Taiwan has not had an execution since December 2005 and that there has been growing debate on abolishing capital punishment.
“It’s really a good sign that we’re getting close to [abolishing the death penalty] and I hope we can soon complete the last mile,” she said.
She also urged the public to pay more attention to the physical and psychological condition of the 32 people currently on death row.
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