International human rights organizations have again urged Taiwan to abolish the death penalty, while the government responded as usual by saying that there remained a lack of consensus on the issue among Taiwanese.
Amnesty International in London yesterday released its annual report, The State of the World’s Human Rights 2011, in which Taiwan was criticized over issues to do with the death penalty, freedom of expression, justice and migrants’ rights.
Amnesty International deputy director for the Asia-Pacific Catherine Baber was quoted by Central News Agency as calling it a major step backward that Taiwan carried out executions after having practiced a four-year de facto moratorium on executions since 2005.
In Taipei, Executive Yuan spokesman Philip Yang (楊永明) said adopting a top-down approach to the abolition could cause more controversy.
The government will uphold existing laws to carry out death sentences handed down by courts while simultaneously hoping that a thorough discussion would result in a consensus on the issue, Yang said.
Taiwan executed four death row inmates on April 30 last year, the first time the death penalty had been carried out since December 2005, followed by executions of another five inmates 11 months later on March 4, despite the resumption inciting criticism from many human rights groups at home and abroad.
“There is indeed a high level of disagreement on the issue. Some people favor ending the death penalty out of concern for human rights, but some people say we should keep it as a deterrent to committing a crime,” he said.
Yang said whether the abolition of capital punishment is symbolic of human rights or of a advanced country is open to debate because the death penalty is still used in countries such as the US, Japan and South Korea.
In response to Philip Yang, Amnesty International Taiwan deputy secretary-general Yang Tsung-li (楊宗澧) criticized the government, saying it used a lack of public consensus as an excuse to uphold capital punishment.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration in the past three years has done nothing to encourage the abolition of the death penalty, apart from holding four public hearings on the issue last year, Yang Tsung-li said.
The executions last year were carried out one day after a hearing on the issue, and the executions in March came less than one month after Ma offered an apology to the family of Chiang Kuo-ching (江國慶), who was found to have been wrongfully executed by the military 14 years ago over the rape and murder of a girl, Yang Tsung-li said.
All this showed that Ma’s promise to abolish the death penalty was just empty words, he said.
The report also criticized Taiwan’s government for what it said was its failure to deliver on promises to amend the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) that limits citizens’ rights to assembly and free speech.
It also voiced concerns over the slow progress to enact a judges’ act to address corruption scandals involving high court judges and over the working conditions of migrant workers.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods