Former minister of justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) yesterday accused Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) of hypocrisy after he said the “most evil” inmates on death row should be executed.
Wang’s criticism came as newly appointed Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) took office yesterday.
Wang did not take part in Tseng’s inaugural ceremony as is customary, but instead attended SET TV talk show Go, New Taiwan, where she criticized the government’s likely resumption of executions.
“If one more bullet is fired, all the previous efforts of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration will have been for nothing,” Wang said on the show.
As the Ma government signed two international covenants on human rights last year, and praised their integration into local law, Wang said Taiwan’s human rights standards should now be equal to those of the most advanced nations. The two covenants stipulate that signatory states should eventually abolish the death penalty or first suspend executions, she said.
In other words, any further executions would be both unconstitutional and a direct violation of the terms of the covenants, she said.
Asked to comment on Wu’s comments about executing the most evil convicts, Wang said on TV that it was hypocritical.
Wang tendered her resignation on March 11 after the Presidential Office said death sentences that have been handed down must be carried out and that any suspension of executions should follow the law.
This was a response to Wang’s comments on March 9 that she would not execute any of the inmates on death row during her term as minister of justice.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said yesterday that he expected Tseng to swiftly sign enact execution orders.
Taiwan currently has 44 inmates on death row, but the Ministry of Justice has not approved an execution since December 2005.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
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The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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