Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers said on Sunday that they opposed a Ministry of Justice plan to phase out the death penalty, claiming it would result in an increase in the crime rate.
The remarks came one day after the ministry said it planned to gradually achieve its goal by conducting extensive research and discussion and proposing complementary measures to win the support of the public.
However, KMT Legislator Wu Ching-chih (吳清池) said it was not the right time to push for elimination of the death penalty.
He said that social order was not good and that the public did not have sufficient understanding of law and order.
Abolishing the death penalty would not be conducive to social order and might encourage major crime rings to engage in bigger crimes, he said.
The death penalty serves as a deterrent to those who intend to engage in illicit activities, said Wu, adding that if the ministry proposed a draft bill to abolish the death penalty in the next legislative session, he would oppose it.
Chu Fong-chi (朱鳳芝), another KMT lawmaker, agreed, adding that South Africa now has no capital punishment, which she claimed was the reason its social order was deteriorating.
She suggested keeping the death penalty in place, but urged local judges to exert more caution when handing down death sentences.
KMT Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) said the ministry should respect public opinion, since there was no consensus on the abolishment.
A day earlier, the ministry said in a statement that capital punishment uses national power to deprive a criminal’s right to life so that the criminal is isolated from the rest of society permanently.
Such methods are cruel and fail to meet the requirement that punishment should also serve rehabilitation purposes, the ministry said.
Many democratic, advanced nations have therefore abolished the death penalty with or without conditions, it said.
Up to 137 countries have abandoned capital punishment both legally and in reality, while 60 countries still maintain it, Amnesty International data released in May showed.
Only 24 of these 60 countries still carry out death sentences, the ministry said, adding that the UN General Assembly also endorsed a resolution on Dec. 18 calling for a halt to executions.
Although abolishing the death penalty is a world trend, up to 80 percent of the people in Taiwan oppose the idea, according to the results of a ministry poll released in February.
However, the percentage of support dropped sharply to 43 percent when the ministry asked the respondents if they would agree to the death penalty being replaced by life imprisonment with no parole.
Under such a premise, another 56 percent supported the abolishment of capital punishment, the ministry said.
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