Amnesty International yesterday renewed its call on President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to abolish the death penalty.
Speaking at a press conference in Taipei to mark the group’s annual report on executions, Roseann Rife, deputy program director for Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific office, said: “Amnesty International reiterated to President Ma Ying-jeou that we look to Taiwan to also be a leader in the region and help influence China and Japan to take similar steps.”
Amnesty International secretary-general Claudio Cordone wrote to Ma earlier this month to make a similar appeal.
Rife’s appeal came as the nation looks likely to execute the first of its 44 inmates on death row later this year. There has not been an execution since late 2005.
The issue of whether to abolish the death penalty resurfaced recently after minister of justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) was forced to resign because of reactions to a statement in which she made clear her support for the abolition of the death penalty and refused to sign off on outstanding execution orders.
Her successor, Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫), said he would have no problem signing execution orders once all procedures have been completed.
At the press conference yesterday, Rife said that in many countries, death sentences are often the result of flawed legal procedures.
Many defendants are too poor to hire attorneys and court-appointed lawyers are often inexperienced or have heavy workloads, which is unfair to the defendants.
The rights group also urged Ma to follow the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (公民與政治權利國際公約及經濟社會文化權利國際公約) — which was signed by him last year and is now in force — to protect human rights by abolishing the death penalty.
In its annual report, Amnesty said that China, which uses the death penalty as a political weapon, had the highest number of executions last year.
The report shows that as of last year, 95 countries abolished the death penalty.
Although 58 countries have yet to abolish the death penalty, only 18 performed executions last year.
This was the first year Amnesty disregarded official information published by the Chinese government, which does not release exact figures because “executions are still kept as state secrets in China,” Rife said.
The rights group alleges that the actual number of executions in China last year — estimated to be in the thousands — far exceeds the official figures released by Beijing.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
Seven of the 17 NT$10 million (US$311,604) winning receipts from the November-December uniform invoice lottery remain unclaimed as of today, the Ministry of Finance said, urging winners to redeem their prizes by May 5. The reminder comes ahead of the release of the winning numbers for the January-February lottery tomorrow. Among the unclaimed receipts was one for a NT$173 phone bill in Keelung, while others were for a NT$5,913 purchase at Costco in Taipei's Neihu District (內湖), a NT$49 purchase at a FamilyMart in New Taipei City's Tamsui District (淡水), and a NT$500 purchase at a tea shop in New Taipei City's
Taiwanese officials were shown the first of 66 F-16V fighter jets purchased by Taiwan from the United States, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday, adding the aircraft has completed an initial flight test and is expected to be delivered later this year. A delegation led by Deputy Minister of National Defense Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) visited Lockheed Martin’s F-16 C/D Block 70 (also known as F-16V) assembly line in South Carolina on March 16 to view the aircraft. The jet will undergo a final acceptance flight in the US before being delivered to Taiwan, the
The New Taipei Metro's Sanyin Line and the eastern extension of the Taipei Metro's Tamsui-Xinyi Line (Red Line) are scheduled to begin operations in June, the National Development Council said today. The Red Line, which terminates at Xiangshan Station, would be connected by the 1.4km extension to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, while the Sanyin Line would link New Taipei City's Tucheng and Yingge stations via Sanxia District (三峽). The council gave the updates at a council meeting reviewing progress on public construction projects for this year. Taiwan's annual public infrastructure budget would remain at NT$800 billion (US$25.08 billion), with NT$97.3
Deliveries of delayed F-16V jets are expected to begin in September, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said today, after senior defense officials visited the US last week. The US in 2019 approved a US$8 billion sale of Lockheed Martin F-16 jets to Taiwan, a deal that would take the nation’s F-16 fleet to more than 200 jets, but the project has been hit by issues including software problems. Koo appeared today before a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, which is discussing different versions of the special defense budget this week. The committee is questioning officials today,
RSS