Human rights activists welcomed the support of 100,000 French who signed a petition asking Taiwan’s government to spare the life of death-row prisoner Chiou Ho-shun (邱和順), while calling on the government to abolish capital punishment.
“In a ‘signature marathon’ campaign organized by Amnesty International in December last year, as many as 105,495 signatures were collected from French citizens calling for a stop to the execution of Chiou, who was sentenced to death based on a confession obtained through torture, and demanding a new legal process for him,” Amnesty International France said in a press statement in French released on Wednesday.
“The signatures will be officially presented to the Taipei Representative Office in Paris on Feb. 14 at 3pm,” it said.
Chiou was selected as one of Amnesty International’s highlighted cases, for which the organization calls for urgent action from its members worldwide, in 2011 when his death sentence was finalized.
Other than petitions and letters to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫), Chiou has also received 2,000 letters of support from across the world.
Chiou was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a nine-year-old boy in 1987, though there was no direct hard evidence proving his involvement.
Instead, a confession — which Chiou claims to have made after he was tortured — was the basis of the conviction.
The findings of a Control Yuan investigation support his claim.
“On one hand, I think this is excellent to hear, however, on the other hand, it’s saddening,” Amnesty International Taiwan chairman Freddy Lim (林昶佐) told the Taipei Times via telephone on hearing the news.
“It’s saddening, because, after more than 20 years since the democratization of Taiwan, human rights abuses that require attention from activists within and outside of the country still exist,” he said.
Lin Hsin-yi (林欣怡), executive director of the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty, welcomed the news, though she urged the public to pay as much attention to all 56 inmates on death row.
“Besides Chiou’s case, there are also many other cases among the 56 death-row prisoners that are problematic — the case of Cheng Hsing-tse [鄭性澤] is one,” Lin said.
Cheng was sentenced to death after being convicted of the murder of a police officer, though there was no hard evidence supporting the conviction and Cheng insists that the confession he made during police interrogation was the product of torture.
“I would say that capital punishment is a very ‘unsafe’ penalty, because it’s irreversible and the quality of legal procedure is notoriously poor in Taiwan,” Lin said. “It’s time to abolish the death penalty.”
Asked for comment, Deputy Minister of Justice Wu Chen-huan (吳陳鐶) said that he could not comment on individual cases and that each case would be handled fairly according to the law.
Department of European Affairs Director-General Hsu Mien-sheng (徐勉生) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said he had yet to receive any information from the representative office in France.
“I need to look into it before deciding how the ministry will handle the petition,” Hsu said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai