The EU on Friday expressed opposition to capital punishment after the first execution under President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration, saying that Taiwan should immediately reintroduce a moratorium on the death penalty.
Lee Hung-chi (李宏基), 39, who was convicted of murder in 2014, was executed in Kaohsiung on Friday.
Lee was initially sentenced to life imprisonment by the Kaohsiung District Court for stabbing his ex-wife to death and killing his daughter by carbon monoxide poisoning in April 2014.
The High Court later changed the punishment to the death sentence and that ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2016.
In a statement released in Brussels, the EU expressed its sincere sympathy to the family and friends of the people Lee killed.
Separately, Maja Kocijancic, a spokesperson for the European External Action Service, the EU’s diplomatic service, said that the EU is unequivocally opposed to capital punishment.
“The death penalty is a cruel and inhumane punishment, which fails to act as a deterrent and represents an unacceptable denial of human dignity and integrity,” Kocijancic said.
At the first EU-Taiwan Human Rights Consultations in Taipei in March, participants discussed the merits of holding a broad public debate regarding capital punishment, taking into account its decline worldwide and accelerating the work of the task force on the death penalty in Taiwan, Kocijancic said.
In addition to these measures, the EU looks to Taiwan’s authorities to immediately reintroduce a moratorium on the death penalty, as recommended by international experts in March 2013, as a first step to its total abolition, she said.
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