The recent execution of five death row inmates not only brought the topic of Taiwan’s abolishing the death penalty back into public focus, but also led the German government’s commissioner for human rights policy to immediately condemn the decision and demand that Taiwan’s representative to Germany explain the matter to Germany’s Foreign Office. Shortly after this, the EU’s High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy also issued a strong protest.
The German reaction could easily have been anticipated. In 2005, Washington Post journalist Charles Lane discovered that every time a US state executed a death row inmate, the German media would rise as one to attack the US, although the German government did not dare reprimand the US ambassador to Germany. After researching the issue to get to the bottom of the drafting of Article 102 of Germany’s Grundgesetz (Basic Law), which abolishes the death penalty, Lane wrote a piece called “The Paradoxes of a Death Penalty Stance.”
Many Germans feel that Article 102, which simply reads, “The death penalty is abolished,” gives them the moral high ground, and they think of other nations as being barbaric for not following in their footsteps. If you ask a German about the source of Article 102, the answer would be that they were motivated by disgust at the Nazis’ brutal killings during World War II and so decided to abolish the death penalty to uphold human rights and dignity. However, Lane discovered another reason.
After World War II had just ended, nearly 80 percent of Germans supported the death sentence. Therefore, the Social Democrats, who had promoted abolishing the death sentence, did not dare go against public opinion. Other political parties were the same. However, a miracle occurred and a delegate, Hans-Christoph Seebohm, from a small party on the far right surprisingly proposed abolishing the death sentence. What where his motives for doing so?
At that time, the occupying forces had already held several trials in Nuremberg and major war criminals had been executed while many secondary war criminals had been sentenced to death, but had not yet been executed. Seebohm had very close ties to the Nazis and to save others from execution, he came up with the plan to abolish the death penalty. Unexpectedly, not only did the Social Democrats agree, but the larger Christian Democratic Union also supported the idea, as many of its members were also Nazi sympathizers, and Article 102 was passed.
In his piece, Lane says that those who wrote the article did not care about the fate of ordinary killers and that if it wasn’t for those Nazi leaders, Germany would never have drawn up Article 102.
Germany has been a major player in promoting the abolition of the death sentence. Before World War II, smaller countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands abolished the death sentence, but such a move did not catch on. After Germany’s economy regained its strength and as it gained more of a say in Western European affairs, the Germans used this as an opportunity to promote the values of their Basic Law and worked assiduously at pushing through the European Convention on Human Rights demanding that all member states abolish the death sentence.
With the exception of Belarus, all European countries have now done this, so Germany can claim a lot of the credit for pushing for the abolition of the death sentence. However, we must know that their abolition of the death sentence was a product of chance. Article 102 was drawn up against public opinion and, in comparison, the way Taiwan is acting is more in line with the practices of a democratic nation.
Huang Juei-min is a law professor at Providence University.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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