The government’s justification for executing four death row inmates last month — that it had to uphold the law — was untenable, EU representative to Taiwan Guy Ledoux said yesterday, as he continued to urge Taiwan to resume its moratorium on the death penalty.
“Many countries have unwritten moratoriums. For example, South Korea ... for the last 13 years there hasn’t been any execution [in the country],” Ledoux, the head of the European Economic and Trade Office, said yesterday.
Having followed the issue since former minister of justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) resigned on March 11 because of public opposition to her anti-capital punishment position, Ledoux had expressed concern to Executive Yuan Secretary-General Lin Join-sane (林中森) and Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫), Wang’s successor, before the four were executed on April 30.
On Thursday, Ledoux went to see Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平).
Saying “it was unfortunate that our call hadn’t been heard [before the execution],” Ledoux added that he “asked [Wang] again to resume the moratorium on the death penalty.”
Ledoux said that he cited South Korea as an example during talks with Taiwanese officials, “because it takes place in Northeast Asia, so it cannot be said that the Asian approach is different.”
He made the remarks to reporters while attending the 2010 Forum of Perspectives on Economic and Trade Relations between the EU and Taiwan.
Following the executions, the EU issued two statements calling on Taiwanese authorities to resume the moratorium that had been in place since 2005 and to take steps toward eventual abolition.
One came from the high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy and the vice president of the European Commission, and the other from the president and vice president of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament.
Asked whether the EU would take concrete action to push Taiwan to abolish the death penalty, Ledoux said that “we will certainly continue to encourage Taiwan to go back to the de facto moratorium and stop further executions.”
In response to a question on possible repercussions for EU-Taiwan relations if Taiwan continues to execute the 40 inmates who remain on death row, Ledoux said that it would affect the EU’s perception of the country’s achievements in democracy and human rights.
“Taiwan is viewed in Europe as a place with democracy and respect for human rights. Of course resumption of the death penalty and executions would affect this perception of the high standards of Taiwan’s democracy and human rights,” he said.
Ledoux said that European statistics clearly demonstrated that the death penalty did not serve as a deterrent.
“Even when the death penalty was abolished, criminality didn’t increase at all. So I don’t think there’s any connection between the death penalty and security of the citizens,” he said.
“On the contrary, I think as you might have miscarriages of justice, the fact that the death penalty still exists could mean that any citizen could be unfairly executed. I think that’s something that we need to avoid,” Ledoux said.
Later yesterday, when asked to respond to Ledoux, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) appealed for more time to reach a public consensus on abolishing capital punishment.
“We have not wavered from pursuing the ideal of human rights, and we also signed [two UN] covenants on human rights, which showed that we attach great importance to human rights … [but] regarding a moratorium on, or abolition of, the death penalty, we need a higher degree of consensus,” Yang said.
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