Last month, three days after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) received 15 members of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP) steering committee, the Ministry of Justice executed six criminals. It is very likely that, when Ma was meeting the coalition’s committee members, he was aware that the executions were due to take place three days later.
After the meeting with the president, the committee members visited the ministry, which had clearly already resolved to execute the six individuals.
Several committee members were still in Taiwan the day the government put the six to death and were astounded at the behavior of the president and ministry officials, who had received them, but did not say anything of their plans.
When defending his own stance on the death penalty to the members of the WCADP steering committee, Ma said that from 1991 to 2000, 277 prisoners were executed in Taiwan, compared with only 36 since 2000, seemingly implying that the reduction in the number of executions was a major achievement of his administration.
However, before Ma took office, Taiwan went three years without a single execution: It was Ma who reinstated the death penalty.
Ma presided over 73 executions in the period between 1993 and 1996, when he was minister of justice, more than double the number that took place in the decade or so since 2000.
When Ma was talking to the committee members, he said that he was clear on the issue of capital punishment, which simply meant that he was aware of what they were talking about.
When the WCADP chairman mentioned the overcrowding in Taiwanese prisons, Ma said that the government wanted to build more prisons, but that the public was against the idea.
When the committee suggested that capital punishment be put on hold and that life sentences be given out instead, he responded by saying that this would just exacerbate the problem of overcrowding, as if there were thousands upon thousands of inmates on death row, when there are only about 60.
In March, an international panel of experts reviewing the nation’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights made 81 recommendations.
One of these was that the nation should work toward suspending capital punishment as soon as possible. When Ma spoke of these 81 recommendations to the WCADP committee, he sounded very pleased with himself, as if he had been awarded 81 points.
In reality, the recommendations represented the failings of the government in its compliance with the two covenants. Ma did not so much as mention the bit about suspending executions.
Ma sent six people to their deaths just three days after receiving this international contingent of members of the WCADP steering committee.
He was disingenuous in dealing with these representatives of the international community.
In defending his policy on the death penalty he was both arrogant and complacent, and he turned a deaf ear to the recommendations given by the panel reviewing the nation’s record on the UN covenants that have been written into Taiwanese law.
Not only did he disregard the recommendations, he went ahead and flouted them within a matter of days of meeting the WCADP contingent. If this is how the president believes foreign relations should be conducted, he is essentially signing the death warrant for our country.
Chiu Hei-yuan is a research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology.
Translated by Paul Cooper
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) are expected to meet this month in Paris to prepare for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). According to media reports, the two sides would discuss issues such as the potential purchase of Boeing aircraft by China, increasing imports of US soybeans and the latest impacts of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs. However, recent US military action against Iran has added uncertainty to the Trump-Xi summit. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) called the joint US-Israeli airstrikes and the
RSS