Activists opposed to the death penalty yesterday protested outside the Control Yuan in Taipei against Control Yuan President Wang Chien-shien, who had praised the executions last Friday of six prisoners.
The protesters also asked the Control Yuan to look into Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu’s (曾勇夫) signing of the execution orders.
Holding up signs condemning executions and Wang’s remarks that the execution of prisoners on death row is a manifestation of justice and that he would praise Tseng for his decision to sign the execution orders, activists called on Wang to apologize and accused Tseng of illegally executing the prisoners.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
“It’s Wang’s personal freedom to support capital punishment. However, as head of the Control Yuan, he should have launched an investigation into the signing of the execution orders, instead of praising illegal homicide by the Ministry of Justice,” said Kao Yung-cheng (高涌誠), an attorney and a long-time human rights advocate. “This is encourages officials to act illegally.”
Kao said that, according to Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), “anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence.”
“Tseng knows that all the six executed prisoners requested a presidential pardon, and the Presidential Office has also confirmed that it received those requests,” Kao said. “Hence, the six should not have been executed before the Presidential Office responded, whether or not amnesty would be granted.”
After President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) signing and the Legislative Yuan’s ratification and adoption of a law on imposing the ICCPR and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the two international human rights covenants are granted the status of domestic laws, “thus any government official who claims that he or she is acting according to the law should act according to the two covenants as well,” Kao said.
Control Yuan member Yeh Yao-peng (葉耀鵬) accepted the petition and promised to launch a probe into the ministry’s administrative responsibility on the executions.
A Control Yuan staffer said that Wang is on leave and out of the country, and was thus unable to be contacted to meet with the demonstrators.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching