The Fourth World Congress Against the Death Penalty, organized by Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (Together Against the Death Penalty) and sponsored by the Swiss Confederation in partnership with the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP), took place in Geneva last week.
Focuses for concern at the congress included China, the US, Japan and Iran. Another important item was a constitutional interpretation regarding the death penalty in the Republic of Korea that was made public on the last day of the congress.
Taiwanese organizations were invited to attend the congress, and their delegates shared Taiwan’s experience during sessions about strategies for anti-death-penalty campaigning and prospects for moratoria and abolition of capital punishment in Asia.
Although Taiwan is not a member of the UN, it ratified two international human rights conventions last year — the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights — and passed a law on their implementation. This shows our country’s respect for and willingness to participate in the global human-rights framework. Participants at the Geneva congress felt Taiwan deserves recognition for the progress it has made.
Elizabeth Zitrin, coordinator of US advocacy group Death Penalty Focus, spoke on behalf of the WCADP at the opening ceremony. Zitrin said she realizes that many countries, including Taiwan, use the US as an excuse, saying that the US, too, has the death penalty. However, she said the situation differs depending on each US state, and more states have abolished the capital punishment over the years.
An important recent development is the fact that the prestigious American Law Institute (ALI), which formerly did not oppose retention of the death penalty, last year made what amounted to a public declaration of support for abolition.
In 1962, the ALI published a model penal code that came to be taken as an important reference for legislation related to capital punishment in US states. Five decades later, however, the ALI has removed the section of its model penal code that concerns the death penalty. The existence of that section gave the impression that the death penalty system could be retained as long as sentencing could be made less arbitrary. Over time, however, ALI members have seen that the death penalty cannot be applied fairly and with certainty.
Zitrin said the ALI’s decision will help to bring about complete abolition of capital punishment in the US, and she hopes other countries that still have a death penalty will take this into consideration.
William Schabas, a world-renowned researcher and expert on the death penalty, told the congress about the content of the UN’s latest five-year report on capital punishment. Schabas, who has taken part in the compilation of several such reports, said that as of last year, 151 countries had scrapped the death penalty, and, of the remaining 47, only 20 — less than half — still carry out executions. The number of executions has also fallen considerably over the past five years, he said.
Besides the US, Schabas said other countries that continue to administer capital punishment include Iran, Iraq, Japan and China — the last being the country with the most executions. It can be seen from this year’s report that abolition of the death penalty has become an irreversible world trend.
Schabas predicted that the death penalty may well be abolished worldwide sometime between 2015 and 2025.
The biggest surprise at the congress was, without doubt, the decision announced by the Constitutional Court of Korea. South Korea has not carried out any executions in the past 12 years, so many people hoped the constitutional interpretation would put an end to the death penalty altogether. Although the South Korean justices found the death penalty to be constitutional, they recognized that it may be imposed in error and is open to abuse.
The point of their ruling is that the decision on whether to keep or abolish the death penalty should be made by the National Assembly.
Taiwanese groups opposed to capital punishment are also carefully considering applying for another constitutional interpretation following Taiwan’s ratification of the two human rights covenants. We believe the Council of Grand Justices are more likely than their South Korean colleagues to make a wise judgment that will take Taiwan forward on this life-and-death issue.
Lin Hsin-yi is executive director of the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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