The Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty is calling on the public to join its "Life Watch" project to help save the lives of prisoners mistakenly convicted and sentenced to death by courts.
Alliance members stressed that private individuals are welcome to take part in the "Life Watch" project and to serve as long-term observers to prevent the judicial system from taking the lives of innocent people.
Citing US research, alliance members said that the courts might have arrived at an incorrect verdict in some 7 percent of cases involving the death penalty. A similar group, dubbed the "Innocence Project," is active in the US, they said.
According to a 1994 publication of the Cabinet-level Research, Development and Evaluation Commission (RDEC), 482 Taiwanese prisoners were executed during the 1955-1992 period. Alliance members noted that according to the statistics provided by the "Innocence Project," some 34 persons might have been wrongly put to death.
The RDEC publication shows that most of the 482 executed persons were drawn from the lower-ranks of society, being unemployed or low-income workers, poorly educated, or young, first-time offenders.
The Life Watch project is co-sponsored by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Judicial Reform Foundation, the Chang Fo-chuan Center for the Study of Human Rights, Fujen University John Paul II Peace Institute and the Taipei Bar Association, alliance members added.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong effective from 5:30pm, while local governments canceled school and work for tomorrow. A land warning is expected to be issued tomorrow morning before it is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, the agency said. Taoyuan, and well as Yilan, Hualien and Penghu counties canceled work and school for tomorrow, as well as mountainous district of Taipei and New Taipei City. For updated information on closures, please visit the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Web site. As of 5pm today, Fung-wong was about 490km south-southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost point.
UNILATERAL MOVES: Officials have raised concerns that Beijing could try to exert economic control over Kinmen in a key development plan next year The Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) yesterday said that China has so far failed to provide any information about a new airport expected to open next year that is less than 10km from a Taiwanese airport, raising flight safety concerns. Xiamen Xiangan International Airport is only about 3km at its closest point from the islands in Kinmen County — the scene of on-off fighting during the Cold War — and construction work can be seen and heard clearly from the Taiwan side. In a written statement sent to Reuters, the CAA said that airports close to each other need detailed advanced
Tropical Storm Fung-Wong would likely strengthen into a typhoon later today as it continues moving westward across the Pacific before heading in Taiwan’s direction next week, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 8am, Fung-Wong was about 2,190km east-southeast of Cape Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, moving westward at 25kph and possibly accelerating to 31kph, CWA data showed. The tropical storm is currently over waters east of the Philippines and still far from Taiwan, CWA forecaster Tseng Chao-cheng (曾昭誠) said, adding that it could likely strengthen into a typhoon later in the day. It is forecast to reach the South China Sea
Almost a quarter of volunteer soldiers who signed up from 2021 to last year have sought early discharge, the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center said in a report. The report said that 12,884 of 52,674 people who volunteered in the period had sought an early exit from the military, returning NT$895.96 million (US$28.86 million) to the government. In 2021, there was a 105.34 percent rise in the volunteer recruitment rate, but the number has steadily declined since then, missing recruitment targets, the Chinese-language United Daily News said, citing the report. In 2021, only 521 volunteers dropped out of the military, the report said, citing
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