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Letters: Abolish the death penalty

In full agreement with all my European colleagues in Taipei, I am sending this public letter on the death penalty.

Wednesday was World Day Against the Death Penalty.

The EU considers abolition of the death penalty a contribution to the enhancement of human dignity and the progressive development of human rights. On this occasion, we therefore call on Taiwan to join the growing list of those that have formally abolished the death penalty and to commute the sentences of those who are on death row.

To date, 90 countries have abolished the death penalty and a further 40 are de facto abolitionists, having not carried out executions in the last 10 years. More than 50 countries have abolished the death penalty since 1990.

Taiwan, a democracy that has paid close attention to the issues of human rights, should join this group. Taiwan's democracy has been a positive example to others in the region. Abolition of the death penalty would again show its leading place within the region as a defender of human rights.

Taiwan has, in recent years, already taken a number of positive steps.

The death penalty is no longer mandatory for any crimes and no execution has taken place since 2005.

We applaud and welcome this progress and urge Taiwan's legislators to take the logical further steps toward full abolition.

To help reach this goal, a report titled Death Penalty in Taiwan: Towards Abolition was published last year by the International Federation for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty, with funds from the EU.

Many people point to the lack of public support for abolition as the main obstacle to going further. But in nearly all countries (including many in Europe) abolition did not take place with majority public support. Politicians led and public opinion followed.

In the EU it would now be unthinkable for a country to return to using the death penalty and the vast majority of EU citizens would not support such a move.

Those who oppose abolition usually point to a combination of three arguments: retribution, deterrent and cost.

A recent article in The Economist on capital punishment in the US highlighted that the costs of the repeated appeals associated with death row cases make death sentences more expensive than the alternatives.

We know of no comparable data for Taiwan, but we have witnessed the continued, protracted proceedings surrounding such cases here.

The deterrent argument is also not clear-cut. The experience of 130 countries shows that dangerous offenders can be kept safely away from the public without resorting to execution.

Moreover, to point to the deterrent effects of the death penalty, which is focused on a very small number of offenders, is to forget the complex web of factors that influence criminality.

The greatest deterrent to crime is the likelihood that offenders will be apprehended, convicted and punished.

The final argument is that the death penalty is a form of retribution. But the imposition of the death penalty is the ultimate denial of a person's human rights by the authorities. Central to fundamental human rights is that they are inalienable.

Human rights apply to the worst of us as well as to the best of us, which is why they protect all of us. An execution cannot be used to condemn killing; it is killing.

And the death penalty is non-reversible. Courts are not infallible and mistakes do occur. The death penalty removes not only the victim's right to seek redress for wrongful conviction, but also the judicial system's capacity to correct its errors.

In short, none of the practical arguments that are used to justify the death penalty are strong and the moral arguments against it are fundamental.

We again acknowledge the progress that Taiwan has made, but reiterate our call for it to take the further steps required to formally abolish the death penalty.

Jean-Claude Poimboeuf

Director,

French Institute in Taipei

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