The Ministry of Justice on Friday denied accusations that it was unwilling to carry out death sentences, saying that all 37 inmates on death row in Taiwan are in the process of applying for legal remedies.
The prisoners have brought their cases to the Constitutional Court and have therefore received a legally guaranteed stay of execution, the ministry said in a statement.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice presidential candidate and Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) criticized the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) earlier this week, saying it was neither trying to abolish capital punishment nor daring to carry out executions.
Photo: Wu Cheng-feng, Taipei Times
Two people have been put to death under capital punishment laws since the DPP was elected into office in May 2016.
In response, the ministry said the implementation of the death penalty could only be immediate if the remedy process were eliminated, but doing so might contravene Taiwan’s legal system.
Taiwan has written two UN human rights-related covenants into domestic law — namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
Taiwan’s presidential candidates discussed the death penalty in a televised debate last week, with only the KMT’s presidential candidate, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), clearly stating his opposition to abolishing capital punishment.
DPP presidential candidate Vice President William Lai (賴清德) said it was a sensitive issue in any country and that abolishing it requires a high degree of public support.
While neither the ICCPR nor the ICESCR requires abolishing the death penalty, they do call for extra discretion in deciding whether to carry out executions, Lai said.
The ICESCR does not mention the death penalty.
The ICCPR says it “may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law” and can only be carried out “pursuant to a final judgment rendered by a competent court.”
Meanwhile, Taiwan People’s Party Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said that given the global trend away from capital punishment, the only compromise he could think of was to not allow parole for people who have been sentenced to life imprisonment.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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