Incoming Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) said yesterday the ministry would consider the possibility of abolishing capital punishment, but that she must respect the law when dealing with the 29 individuals who remain on death row.
The last execution was more than two years ago.
“It is very, very difficult, but I will face it and try not to avoid it,” Wang told a press conference on her first day as minister.
“We must adhere to the law and deal with the individuals on death row,” she said.
But Wang said she had no idea how to address the matter.
The Democratic Progressive Party government said in 2000 it would abolish the death penalty, but the ministry said it was not able to do so because a majority of Taiwanese still believe that capital punishment is the most effective means of deterring serious crime.
As a former attorney and social activist, Wang said the abolishment of capital punishment was increasingly being pursued globally. She said, however, that close to 80 percent of people opposed abolishing the death penalty.
The opposition dropped to about 40 percent, however, if additional measures — such as setting sentence limits and a threshold on parole for life imprisonment — were put on the table.
She said the ministry would study the complementary measures along with the possibility of abolishing the death penalty.
Wang said that maintaining the death penalty also had repercussions for the nation’s image abroad.
Ministry figures showed that the number of executions has decreased for years. Thirty-two prisoners were executed in 1998, a number that shrank to 10 in 2001 and three each year between 2004 and 2006.
In related news, the Chinese-language Liberty Times, (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported yesterday that Prosecutor Wu Wen-chung (吳文忠) of the Supreme Court Prosecutors Office’s Special Investigation Panel had said on Tuesday that “[former president] Chen Shui-bian [陳水扁] should be executed” while chatting with reporters after a press conference.
Wang said yesterday it was very inappropriate for Wu to make such a remark and asked the Supreme Prosecutors Office to investigate the matter.
Wu denied the report yesterday, saying he was joking.
“I said the individuals on death row should be executed, not Chen,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching