Two months ago, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) apologized to Chiang Kuo-ching (江國慶) and his family for the way he had been treated. Ma was 14 years too late.
Chiang, a 21-year-old air force private, had been wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl. He was executed in 1997.
Those who saw Ma’s gesture as a sign that Taiwan was moving away from the death penalty were mistaken. Taiwan, which ended a more than four-year hiatus with four executions in April last year, executed five more people in a single day just a month after Ma’s apology.
The executions in Taiwan stand in stark, disturbing contrast to the rising tide of world opinion that has seen a growing list of countries abolishing the death penalty in either law or practice.
While a huge majority of governments have stopped executing, some strongly resist reform. A few, like Taiwan, have actually restarted this most cruel and inhumane punishment. They claim popular mandates, crime deterrence or religious, cultural or political principles as justifications.
Taipei also insists it is required by law to execute, and yet it is not honoring international legal obligations such as requiring clemency proceedings.
In 1977, when Amnesty International began its global campaign against the death penalty, it had been abolished by only 16 countries. Now, as the organization’s annual report Death Sentences and Executions 2010 shows, about 100 countries have stopped using it for all crimes, with 139 ending it in law or practice. And there are other encouraging milestones.
Mongolia implemented a moratorium on executions and Gabon abolished the death penalty in law in the past year. Even in countries where support for the death penalty remains strong, such as China, Kenya, Guyana and Bangladesh, positive steps are being made toward bringing its use in line with human rights standards. More states than ever before voted at the UN in favor of a worldwide moratorium on executions. And this year in the US, Illinois became the 16th state to abolish the death penalty.
However, the state-sanctioned killings continue. There were at least 527 executions in 22 countries last year, not including the thousands thought to have been executed in China, and more than 2,000 new death sentences are known to have been handed down.
Last year, prisoners were beheaded, electrocuted, hanged, given lethal injections or shot at close range in the back of the head or the heart by firing squad. Sometimes the sentences were carried out in public.
Countries that insist on using the death penalty continue to claim that they use it only in accordance with international law, but most of their actions blatantly contradict these claims.
In reality, many use the death penalty as a convenient way of getting rid of troublesome people and showing that authorities are tough on crime. It is often imposed after unfair trials and based on confessions extracted through torture. It is often used against political opponents, poor people, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities. It is sometimes even used against people who allegedly committed crimes when they were under 18 or who have significant mental impairments.
Worryingly, death sentences are handed down for acts such as fraud, sorcery, apostasy, drug-related offences or sexual relations between consenting adults, which fall far short of the legal threshold of “most serious” crimes.
In just the past year, death sentences were imposed for drug-related offences in China, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Yemen. The Ugandan parliament saw the introduction of a bill calling for the death penalty for “aggravated” homosexuality. And in Pakistan, Aasia Bibi, a Christian mother of five, faced charges of blasphemy and possible death.
Incredibly, despite the unmistakable global trend toward abolition, some countries are actually working to expand the number of crimes carrying the death penalty. Last year, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Uganda and the US all proposed legislation to expand the scope of its use. Meanwhile, Gambia, Guatemala, Nigeria and Trinidad and Tobago threatened to resume executions.
Amnesty opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception. We oppose it regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to carry out the execution. The death penalty is cruel, inhumane, ineffective and unjust.
The global trend toward abolition is clear, but the fight is far from finished. As events in the past year have shown, the gains that have been achieved over the past three decades of campaigning cannot be guaranteed. Even when almost the whole world says “enough is enough,” some countries choose not to hear.
Taiwan was once considered a leader in the move to abolish the death penalty in Asia, but the recent executions are a step backwards. If Taiwan is really committed to ending executions, it should start by commuting the death sentences of the more than 40 people currently threatened with execution and ensuring there are never any more cases like Chiang Kuo-ching.
Salil Shetty is secretary-general of Amnesty International.
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