The debate over the death penalty, which is always in the background in Taiwan, is occasionally thrust to the fore.
The Chinese-language United Daily News on Feb. 13 published a report headlined “Death penalty convictions and executions reduced to zero last year, a virtual abolition of the death penalty.”
Following the high-profile cases of Tseng Wen-yan (曾文彥) and Chen Po-chien (陳伯謙), whose death sentences were commuted to life in prison, Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥) said he respected that courts decide on a case-by-case basis.
Regarding the 38 inmates awaiting execution, he said: “There is no deliberate procrastination, we are waiting for the legal process to conclude.”
Public outrage over Tseng and Chen’s resentencings soon dissipated.
The past two decades have seen a cyclic response to the issue. If a death row inmate is executed, it provokes a week-long national conversation about the death penalty across the political spectrum, but efforts to educate the public on capital punishment’s human rights implications have led nowhere.
For the political elite and the public alike, the situation is maintained through ambivalence toward debates about the death penalty’s role in restorative justice and retribution.
Would it be possible to proceed differently or fare better if the debate were at a policy level?
The election in 2000 of Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who became president with a narrow margin of votes, proved to be a watershed in Taiwan’s road to implementing human rights principles.
The then-president vowed in his inaugural address “a nation built on the basis of human rights” and “human rights diplomacy.”
The driving forces behind Chen Shui-bian’s policy positions were then-Taiwan Association for Human Rights president Peter Huang (黃文雄) and Taiwan New Century Foundation chairman Chen Lung-chu (陳隆志).
Chen Shui-bian established the Presidential Human Rights Advisory Committee, comprised mainly of academics, lawyers and civil society advocates.
In practice, the vice president would serve as convener of the committee in formulating discussion on major human rights issues and then dispatch advice to the president.
Then-vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) was among those who spearheaded efforts to create a national human rights institution. Unfortunately, these noble ideas failed to materialize when the DPP lost its legislative majority in 2004.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators criticized Chen Shui-bian’s human rights initiatives as being aimed at expanding power beyond the scope of presidential authority. The KMT boycotted many of his human rights projects, including efforts to create a national human rights museum.
Against this backdrop, and under pressure from civil society organizations and the international community, then-minister of justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) said he was committed to abolishing the death penalty.
Nevertheless, Chen Ding-nan and his successor, Morley Shih (施茂林), continued signing execution orders, although the number gradually declined during Chen Shui-bian’s eight years in office, totaling 32.
Chen Shui-bian’s successor, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), advocated for “governing the nation based on the principles of human rights.”
In that spirit, he continued the operation of the advisory committee, but in 2017 then-vice president Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) often lectured it on what it could not do. As a result, Wu did not earn much respect from the committee’s members.
Mab Huang (黃默), a professor at Soochow University, said that Ma’s eight years in office presented a conundrum.
On the one hand, Ma had been instrumental in the ratification of two international covenants, thereby laying the first stone in drafting national reports and assembling international experts to propose recommendations. On the other hand, Ma was explicitly against abolition of the death penalty and the creation of a national human rights commission.
During Ma’s administration, 33 prisoners were executed.
While then-prosecutor general nominee Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) told a legislative review committee meeting that “44 convicts should be executed,” then-minister of justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰), a practicing Buddhist, said that she would not sign any execution orders, a stance that led to controversy and eventually her resignation.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has not committed to abolishing the death penalty, nor has it guaranteed that the 38 death row inmates on the waiting list would not be executed.
The issue apparently remains a stumbling block for politicians to move ahead with a clear policy that would abolish the death penalty.
The legal community has not ruled out possible executions.
Nevertheless, as Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty executive director Lin Hsin-yi (林欣怡) has said, judicial changes have moved in a more positive direction.
However, the nation is not quite ready for the abolition of the death penalty, as prosecutors are still seeking executions in a few cases that do not meet the criteria of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The only reason there were no executions last year was that there were no convictions resulting in capital punishment sentences.
Tsai Ing-wen has only two years left in office. Her legacy will be evaluated by what she achieved and the future that she fought for in the belief that she was on the right side of history.
By abolishing the death penalty, she can highlight one of the stark differences between her government and the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party with regard to respect for human rights.
Huang Yu-zhe is a student in National Chengchi University’s Graduate Institute of Law and Interdisciplinary Studies.
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