In an apparent deviation from what was understood as the President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration’s stance of abolishing capital punishment, Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) said yesterday that the government “never promised to end the death penalty.”
“We have never made such a promise. We have been very cautious about the issue. Over the years, the number of death sentences imposed has fallen, and so has the number of death row inmates executed,” Lin told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview.
The Ministry of Justice on Friday night executed six convicts, the third round of executions since the Ma administration ended a four-year-long moratorium on the death penalty in April 2010 by executing four prisoners that year and another five in March last year.
The executions incurred strong criticism, with the EU, international human rights organizations and activists saying they breached promises that Taiwan would work toward abolishing capital punishment.
Since taking office in May 2008, Ma has on several occasions said that his administration aimed to move toward eventually abolishing the death penalty.
In an open letter to Ma on March 18, 2010, Amnesty International (AI) said that Ma gave his assurance that the “de facto moratorium would remain in place” at a meeting with AI and other groups at the Presidential Office on June 18, 2008.
Amid debate sparked by former minister of justice Wang Ching-feng’s (王清峰) support for a moratorium on executions and her subsequent resignation in early March 2010, AI wrote the open letter to Ma to ask him “to ensure that Taiwan remains firm in reaching for its stated goal of abolition of the death penalty.”
When receiving members of the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty at the Presidential Office on June 15, 2010, Ma said the Republic of China (ROC) aimed to realize a long-term goal to end the death penalty.
Ma said at that time that the goal was stipulated in the two UN human rights covenants — the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — which Ma ratified in May 2009. The legislature enacted an implementation law for their domestic application later that year.
However, Lin said that abolishing capital punishment was “never a promise” that the government had made to the international community, but “a direction we continue to work toward and a goal we hope we can fulfill sometime in the future.”
“At the moment, we are not able to end the death penalty because there has been a lack of public consensus on the issue. The government is also obligated to carry out executions in accordance with the law, since Taiwan still has the sentence on the books,” he said.
Lin said his ministry would continue to communicate with the EU and international friends to explain “persistently and patiently” to them the situation in Taiwan.
“The ROC is a country that highly values human rights and the rule of law. We have been working to ensure implementation of the two UN human rights covenants in our daily work,” he said.
At a separate setting yesterday, Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) said the government “fully understands” the arguments against the death penalty, but “the polls show that people in Taiwan still have some reservations toward abolition of the sentence.”
“There are still quite a few countries that retain capital punishment, for example, the US, the world’s largest national economy. Differences in social background and cultural values in each country should be factored into policy on the death penalty,” Chen said.
Chen said the government would take the issue of abolition of the death penalty seriously since Taiwan has made the two UN covenants legally binding.
Control Yuan President Wang Chien-shien, meanwhile, praised the government for carrying out the executions in defiance of international pressure.
“I disagreed with arguments proposed by anti-death penalty activists. The executions reflect justice. Taiwan is a sovereign independent nation and has its own standards of human rights. There is no need for us to blindly force ourselves to follow global trends,” Wang said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique