The Ministry of Justice yesterday responded to EU calls to abolish capital punishment by saying that Taiwan’s justice system is moving toward that goal in the long term, adding that a high percentage of Taiwanese still favor the death penalty for certain crimes.
Taiwan, China, Japan and the US were among the nations criticized in the Council of the EU’s Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy in the World in 2015, which was released on Monday.
The report said that 101 countries have abolished the death penalty, as the EU reaffirmed “its opposition to the death penalty and use of all diplomatic tools at its disposal to advance the cause of worldwide abolition.”
“The EU deplored the continuing use of the death penalty in various parts of the world: Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Belarus, Egypt, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the USA were a particular focus of attention,” it added, as the EU urged these nations to abolish capital punishment.
Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) yesterday said the ministry’s ultimate goal is to abolish capital punishment in Taiwan, “but current public surveys indicate that 82 percent of the people are against abolition of the death penalty.”
Chen said the ministry has undertaken four measures toward this long-term objective: ending legal requirements for “mandatory capital punishment” for certain crimes; taking steps for the judiciary to deliberate on “discretionary capital punishment”; handing out the death penalty with extreme prudence; and carrying out the death penalty with extreme prudence.
“We are currently reviewing and assessing this issue,” Chen said. “The ministry will take very careful approaches on handling this issue and carrying out the death penalty, before our nation has formally abolished it,” Chen said.
Other judicial officials said that the ministry is still responsible for policies on the death penalty, and that the nation’s laws still retain the death penalty.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS