President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said his administration would reduce the use of the death penalty as part of efforts to protect human rights, and promised to seek public consensus on the issue to move toward the abolition of capital punishment.
Ma made the remarks while presenting the first national human rights report since signing the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights under the UN in 2009.
Since 2006, the government has revised regulations and banned courts from sentencing citizens under 18 years old to death. Prosecutors are also advised to avoid seeking the death penalty in trials.
International human rights organizations have been urging Taiwan to abolish the death penalty, and the issue of the death penalty gained attention again yesterday as the Ma administration presented the report on human rights issues at the Presidential Office.
According to the report compiled by the advisory panel on human rights under the -Presidential Office, Taiwan executed nine death-row inmates in 2010 and last year since the two covenants took effect in 2010. No death penalty was carried out between 2006 and 2009.
Last year, 15 people were sentenced to death, the highest number in the past 10 years, the report said.
Ma said that while the abolition of the death penalty was a global trend, Taiwan still has capital punishment because there remained a lack of consensus on the issue among Taiwanese.
“The two UN covenants do not ban capital punishment, but encourage all countries to move toward the abolition of it … We’ve discussed the nation’s situation with the international community and let other countries understand that we haven’t been able to abolish the death penalty because of divided opinions on the issue domestically,” Ma said.
Citing examples in Europe, Ma said both France and Germany spent more than 100 years to completely abolish the death penalty.
“What we can do, and have already been doing now, is to reduce the death penalty,” he added.
CAUTION: Based on intelligence from the nation’s security agencies, MOFA has cautioned Taiwanese travelers about heightened safety risks in China-friendly countries The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday urged Taiwanese to be aware of their safety when traveling abroad, especially in countries that are friendly to China. China in June last year issued 22 guidelines that allow its courts to try in absentia and sentence to death so-called “diehard” Taiwanese independence activists, even though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction in Taiwan. Late last month, a senior Chinese official gave closed-door instructions to state security units to implement the guidelines in countries friendly to China, a government memo and a senior Taiwan security official said, based on information gathered by Taiwan’s intelligence agency. The
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said yesterday that it is looking to hire 8,000 people this year, at a time when the tech giant is expanding production capacity to maintain its lead over competitors. To attract talent, TSMC would launch a large-scale recruitment campaign on campuses across Taiwan, where a newly recruited engineer with a master’s degree could expect to receive an average salary of NT$2.2 million (US$60,912), which is much higher than the 2023 national average of NT$709,000 for those in the same category, according to government statistics. TSMC, which accounted for more than 60 percent
Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢), a Taiwanese businessman and deputy convener of the nation’s National Climate Change Committee, said yesterday that “electrical power is national power” and nuclear energy is “very important to Taiwan.” Tung made the remarks, suggesting that his views do not align with the country’s current official policy of phasing out nuclear energy, at a forum organized by the Taiwan People’s Party titled “Challenges and Prospects of Taiwan’s AI Industry and Energy Policy.” “Taiwan is currently pursuing industries with high added- value and is developing vigorously, and this all requires electricity,” said the chairman
‘POOP ON STAGE’: The song, which talks about the reluctance to graduate and anxiety about a lack of job opportunities, resonated with many students’ feelings The original song Poop on Stage has been chosen as National Taiwan University’s (NTU) graduation song this year, sparking much debate regarding the song’s title and content, which describes students’ anxiety about post-graduation unemployment. The title, Shang Tai Da Bian (上台大便), is a play on words that literally means “go on stage to poop.” The first three characters, shang tai da (上台大), also mean “to attend NTU,” as “Taida” is a common abbreviation for the university. The last character, bian (便), can mean “convenient” or “then,” but is more commonly associated with defecation. The lyrics of the song describe students’ reluctance to graduate and
RSS