The online news outlet ETtoday on Wednesday published an article alleging that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration is mulling executing death-row inmates to salvage its approval ratings ahead of November’s nine-in-one elections. Although the Presidential Office quickly denied the report, the rumors once again served to underscore the nation’s unhealthy perceptions of the death penalty.
Although Taiwanese society has become more tolerant of different opinions, the abolition of capital punishment remains a taboo subject that is not raised unless people are ready for a heated debate.
Several polls conducted in previous years, along with one published on Thursday last week by the For Public Good Party, a small group that supports peaceful cross-strait exchanges, have shown that Taiwanese lean heavily toward retaining the death sentence, with the overwhelming majority still believing in its deterrent effect.
That means, at a time when the public is largely polarized along traditional party lines and the nation’s leaders — whatever their party — find it almost impossible to push for a new policy without facing fierce opposition from their rivals, the death penalty is a rare issue that people actually see eye to eye on.
Unfortunately, that is where the problem begins.
Due to the high support for capital punishment, executions of death-row inmates appear too often to have been carried out as part of a desperate bid by the central government to distract attention, restore public trust and/or demonstrate a show of force.
A moratorium on the death penalty was in place from December 2005 until April 19, 2010; the following day then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) decided to carry out four death sentences. The executions occurred against the backdrop of a rising public outcry over the Ma administration’s plan to sign the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China.
On April 29, 2014, just weeks after the end of the Sunflower movement’s occupation of the Legislative Yuan’s main chamber, the Ma administration executed five more inmates.
The most vivid example of such a practice was arguably the execution of Taipei MRT killer Cheng Chieh (鄭捷) on May 10, 2016, just 19 days after the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence.
As Cheng was the only inmate executed that day — a rare departure from the customary practice of multiple executions on the same day — and his execution came just 10 days before Ma was set to hand over the presidency to Tsai, his execution was largely seen as a political gesture.
Since its democratization in the 1990s, Taiwan has promoted itself internationally as a rare defender of democratic values and human rights in Asia.
It is true that is how people in the West view the nation these days, but in all honesty, Taiwan’s “plausible” democratic development and protection of human rights are relative, given that most nations in the region are still governed by autocrats.
Despite decades of efforts, Taiwan has yet to rid itself of corruption and vote-buying practices. Racial and gender minorities continue to face discriminatory treatment. Same-sex marriage remains illegal and Taiwanese judges still hand down death sentences.
In other words, there is a lot of room for improvement and the nation cannot afford to be complacent if it still wishes to use its achievements in democracy and human rights protection to secure itself an admission ticket to the international community.
Although there is still a long way to go before Taiwanese society is fully ready to abolish the death penalty, the first and perhaps the most important step is for the government to stop regarding the punishment as a last-ditch solution to its problems.
As long as it still does, the issue of the death penalty will always be an extremely emotional issue that allows little room for rational dialogue.
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