Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) promised yesterday to crack down on the alleged sale of human organs by death row prisoners disguised as organ donations.
“Organ donations should be made without any payment,” Tseng said in response to a report in the Chinese-language Apple Daily that an individual had “ordered an organ” from a death row prisoner and was paying for it with a NT$300,000 “funeral subsidy.”
The report said that several other death row inmates had signed agreements, after being lobbied by brokers, to have their organs removed for transplants after they are executed. In return, the prisoners’ families would receive about NT$200,000 to NT$400,000 per organ, the report said.
Tseng said voluntary organ donations by death row inmates was a good thing, but the buying and selling organs would be strictly prohibited.
Ministry of Justice (MOJ) officials have been asked to investigate and Tseng said any wrongdoing would be dealt with accordingly.
Taiwan carried out its first executions in five years in April after then-justice minister Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) spoke out in early March in favor of a ban on the death penalty. Her stance drew complaints from crime victims’ families that the government was not obeying the law.
The Constitutional Court last month rejected a petition by the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty to commute the executions of the remaining 40 inmates on death row.
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