Rights and death penalty
In applying the law, courts must take into consideration the text of the law and official interpretations of it. When Taiwan accepted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, it also accepted the General Comments (GC) issued by the UN Human Rights Committee.
GC6 paragraph 7 gives the conditions for use of the death penalty, which are considerably more than those set out by Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) (“Five death-row inmates at four prisons executed,” April 30, page 1). In the article, Chen referred to “carrying out executions carefully” and “limiting them to serious crimes.”
GC6 paragraph 7 states that the death penalty should be “quite exceptional” and that there is a “particular right to seek pardon or commutation of sentence.” Besides this advice being applicable to all states parties to the covenant, there are also recommendations made when a state reports on its implementation of the covenant. In Taiwan’s case these recommendations were made by a group of experts on March 1 last year. They particularly stressed the right to seek pardon or commutation.
I wonder if the Ministry of Justice could ignore the constitutional interpretations made by the Council of Grand Justices. I am sure it would not dare do so. Why, then, when it comes to international law, which always overrides domestic law, does the ministry apply a different standard, seeking to remain stuck in a text of 1966 and failing to appreciate that being bound to follow the law implies following the whole law, including its updates and interpretations? Perhaps thinking of computer software would help them understand.
Edmund Ryden
New Taipei City
Trading away liberty
The results of the students’ occupation of the legislature and former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) hunger strike ought to have compelled us to re-evaluate Taiwan’s democratic future, rather than dwelling on and relishing on the concessions from President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government.
Clearly, anxieties about better pay, better jobs and a safer living environment have been the driving force behind these movements of civil disobedience. However, underneath these anxieties, there is a heart-felt reckoning unseen in previous democratic movements in Taiwan.
These students, who are mostly under 30 years of age, have literally demarcated themselves in their ideological proclivity from their parents, who preferred servitude in exchange for stability.
In other words, they have somehow figured out that whatever economic infrastructures the Ma government has been building for them is no more than a total sellout of the most valuable commodity that they have enjoyed in life: liberty.
Some of them may have realized that had the current version of the service trade pact with China been implemented, they might as well say good-bye to the education that they have acquired or are getting, and reinvent themselves as future masseurs to the millions of Chinese who visit Taiwan annually.
Some of them might have been alarmed by a certain professor’s viewpoint, which advocated the idea of a mass human transplantation from Taiwan to China in search of professional opportunities or a better education.
However, either option means sacrificing their liberty in exchange for a downgraded livelihood or a total makeover of their psyche to conform themselves to a social milieu that is totally at odds with their way of life.
Perhaps, John Milton’s words in Samson Agonistes better represent what these students have in mind: “But what more oft in nations grown corrupt, and by their vices brought to servitude, than to love bondage more than liberty, bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.”
Yang Chunhui
US
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