Visiting lawmakers said yesterday they regretted the Taiwanese government’s decision to carry out executions for the first time in more than four years.
The Ministry of Justice executed four inmates on Friday, leaving 40 others on death row. Until Friday’s executions, the ministry had not approved an execution since December 2005.
“It is revolting that four people have been put to death by a civilized, wealthy country. This is barbaric,” Australian Greens leader and Senator Bob Brown said on the sidelines of the Second Congress of the Asia Pacific Greens Network (APGN), being held in Taipei.
“It dehumanizes the governments that not only allow it to happen, but do not legislate against it,” he said.
Australia abolished the death penalty in the 1960s.
Brown said crime rates do not increase, and very often fall, after the death penalty is abolished.
He urged Taiwan to end the death penalty through legislation.
He also called on Taiwan to do better than the US, China and Iran, countries that carry out what he called “murder with a judicial warrant.”
“We are all better off when we end this barbaric practice,” Brown said.
“I am very upset on that, very sad,” said Gerald Hafner, a German member of the European Parliament.
“Whatever they have done, I think the death penalty is something we shouldn’t do. We shouldn’t kill people for having killed others, for having done wrong … I was happy that Taiwan didn’t execute the death penalty ... for a period of time,” Hafner said.
Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲), the convener of Green Party Taiwan, which co-organized the congress, said that abolition of the death penalty is been one of the core values of the Global Green Network, a political alliance of Green Parties around the world.
“It was a shock to our international friends attending the congress because while they were promoting a resolution on the issue [at the event], the Taiwan government suddenly took such a big step backward,” he said.
The four executions prompted Green Party Taiwan to launch a petition at the event that urges the Taiwan government to not “continue to walk the wrong path.”
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