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.
ALIGNED THINKING: Taiwan and Japan have a mutual interest in trade, culture and engineering, and can work together for stability, Cho Jung-tai said Taiwan and Japan are two like-minded countries willing to work together to form a “safety barrier” in the Indo-Pacific region, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday said at the opening ceremony of the 35th Taiwan-Japan Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium in Taipei. Taiwan and Japan are close geographically and closer emotionally, he added. Citing the overflowing of a barrier lake in the Mataian River (馬太鞍溪) in September, Cho said the submersible water level sensors given by Japan during the disaster helped Taiwan monitor the lake’s water levels more accurately. Japan also provided a lot of vaccines early in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) on Monday announced light shows and themed traffic lights to welcome fans of South Korean pop group Twice to the port city. The group is to play Kaohsiung on Saturday as part of its “This Is For” world tour. It would be the group’s first performance in Taiwan since its debut 10 years ago. The all-female group consists of five South Koreans, three Japanese and Tainan’s Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), the first Taiwan-born and raised member of a South Korean girl group. To promote the group’s arrival, the city has been holding a series of events, including a pop-up
TEMPORAL/SPIRITUAL: Beijing’s claim that the next Buddhist leader must come from China is a heavy-handed political maneuver that will fall flat-faced, experts said China’s requirement that the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation to be born in China and approved by Beijing has drawn criticism, with experts at a forum in Taipei yesterday saying that if Beijing were to put forth its own Dalai Lama, the person would not be recognized by the Tibetan Buddhist community. The experts made a remarks at the two-day forum hosted by the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama titled: “The Snow Land Forum: Finding Common Ground on Tibet.” China says it has the right to determine the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, as it claims sovereignty over Tibet since ancient times,
Temperatures in some parts of Taiwan are expected to fall sharply to lows of 15°C later this week as seasonal northeasterly winds strengthen, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. It is to be the strongest cold wave to affect northern Taiwan this autumn, while Chiayi County in the southwest and some parts of central Taiwan are likely to also see lower temperatures due to radiational cooling, which occurs under conditions of clear skies, light winds and dry weather, the CWA said. Across Taiwan, temperatures are to fall gradually this week, dropping to 15°C to 16°C in the early hours of Wednesday
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