Lawmakers across party lines yesterday voiced approval for the resignation of Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) over the row about stays of execution.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) said Wang was right to resign because the public and the Presidential Office did not support her rejection of capital punishment. Lin urged the government to execute the prisoners on death row according to the law as soon as possible.
At present there are 44 inmates on death row in Taiwan. No executions have been carried out since December 2005.
“I am glad that the devils can finally go to hell,” said KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾), referring to the 44 convicts on death row.
KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said the government should execute the 44 by the end of the year. If this cannot be achieved, he said, the government should promise not to pardon any of them if the president decides to grant amnesty next year to commemorate the country's 100th National Day.
While agreeing with Wang’s resignation, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬), a member of the legislature’s Legal Affairs Committee, said conflicts within the KMT administration and Wang’s resignation could have been avoided with better communication.
“The KMT government has already been in place for two years and it has an overwhelming majority in the legislature … it can pass whatever proposal it needs,” Gao said. “Instead, as you can see, there is no communication within the party … only disagreements.”
Saying that government officials should carry out their responsibilities under the law, DPP Legislator Chen Chieh-ju (陳節如), a member of the legislature's Social Welfare Committee, said Wang could make an even greater difference working outside the government.
TV host Pai Ping-ping (白冰冰), whose daughter was kidnapped and murdered 13 years ago and is an advocate of capital punishment, said yesterday that Wang should step down if she didn’t want to carry out death penalties, adding that if a justice minister did that job well, he or she would go to heaven, not hell.
Citing the example of a much admired Chinese official, Bao Zheng (包拯), who lived about 1,000 years ago during the Song Dynasty and was said to be a righteous judge who beheaded many people, Pai said Bao is loved because he executed so many people who deserved the penalty.
Lu Chin-te (陸晉德), father of the child, Lu Cheng (陸正), who was murdered after being kidnapped in 1987, said Wang’s resignation had rendered some justice to victims’ families, and hoped that the next minister would listen to what they had to say.
The Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty, on the other hand, yesterday said it regretted Wang’s resignation, and urged the government to work toward abolition of the death penalty.
While expressing her regret, alliance executive director Lin Hsin-yi (林欣怡) praised Wang for her insistence on abolishing capital punishment, the announcement to suspend executions and the commission of a task force within the Ministry of Justice to research a possible replacement punishment.
Lin called on the government to uphold its promise to make abolition of the death penalty a policy objective and to come up with a concrete plan to meet this target step by step.
“We urge the Presidential Office, the Executive Yuan, the governing as well as the opposition parties to think outside of the ‘election mentality’ when talking about whether to abandon capital punishment,” Lin said. “Instead, they should place protection of human rights as the priority.”
In the initial stages, she said laws should be revised so that the death sentence could only be handed down as a joint decision, a debate session must take place in court when a death sentence is involved and to make it mandatory for criminals who have been sentenced to death to be accompanied by a defense attorney in the third trial.
“I hope that the new justice minister will not take over the job as an executioner, but rather he or she would carefully review each case according to the law and the two international human rights covenants” that were signed by the president and ratified by the legislature last year, Lin said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
RSS