Five prisoners on death row were executed yesterday, the Ministry of Justice announced last night.
The executions were carried out after Minister of Justice Luo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪) on Monday signed the orders authorizing the death sentences to be carried out.
“Convict Teng Kuo-liang (鄧國樑) was executed in Taipei Prison in the evening, Liu Yen-kuo (劉炎國) in Taichung Prison, brothers Tu Ming-hsiung (杜明雄) and Tu Ming-lang (杜明郎) in Tainan Prison, and Tai Wen-cheng (戴文慶) in Hualien Prison,” Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) told a press conference in Taipei.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Chen said the five men had been found responsible for 11 deaths, the injuring of four people and more than 30 robberies.
“In each case there were at least two people killed, and five at most,” he said, adding that the convicted men had tortured and killed their victims with extremely cruel methods, leaving the victims’ families with unforgettable sorrow.
Chen said opinion polls have shown that between 70 percent and 80 percent of the public supports Taiwan retaining the death penalty.
Executions do not violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights because the covenant does not deny the legitimacy of countries which have not abolished the death penalty to carry out executions, and it only requests the countries to carry out executions carefully and limit the executions to cases of serious crimes, he said.
According to the ministry, Tai was sentenced for raping two female taxi drivers in May 2001 after he had been granted a two-day leave from Hualien Prison where he was serving a sentence for a previous crime. He killed one of the women, surnamed Hsieh (謝), with a knife.
Teng received the death penalty for killing a woman and her 10-year-old son in July 2009. He gave the woman drinks containing sedatives before he hit her on the head with a wooden knife and pushed her and her son into a river.
He then jumped into the water and stabbed them to death, according to the Supreme Court ruling, which found that Teng had used extraordinary cruelty in the killing of his victims because of a dispute over a small debt.
The Tu brothers were found guilty of the murders of a Taiwanese businessman, three of his Taiwanese employees and a Chinese woman in China while they were in Guangdong Province with their father in 2011.
Liu Yen-kua (劉炎國) was convicted of shooting dead a police officer in 1997 when he stormed into an illegal casino in the then-Taichung County.
Chen said there are still 47 convicts on death row nationwide.
Taiwan’s Lee Chia-hao (李佳豪) on Sunday won a silver medal at the All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, England, a career best. Lee, 25, took silver in the final of the men’s singles against world No. 1 Shi Yuqi (石宇奇) of China, who won 21-17, 21-19 in a tough match that lasted 51 minutes. After the match, the Taiwanese player, who ranks No. 22 in the world, said it felt unreal to be challenging an opponent of Shi’s caliber. “I had to be in peak form, and constantly switch my rhythm and tactics in order to score points effectively,” he said. Lee got
EMBRACING TAIWAN: US lawmakers have introduced an act aiming to replace the use of ‘Chinese Taipei’ with ‘Taiwan’ across all Washington’s federal agencies A group of US House of Representatives lawmakers has introduced legislation to replace the term “Chinese Taipei” with “Taiwan” across all federal agencies. US Representative Byron Donalds announced the introduction of the “America supports Taiwan act,” which would mandate federal agencies adopt “Taiwan” in place of “Chinese Taipei,” a news release on his page on the US House of Representatives’ Web site said. US representatives Mike Collins, Barry Moore and Tom Tiffany are cosponsors of the legislation, US political newspaper The Hill reported yesterday. “The legislation is a push to normalize the position of Taiwan as an autonomous country, although the official US
CHANGE OF TONE: G7 foreign ministers dropped past reassurances that there is no change in the position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including ‘one China’ policies G7 foreign ministers on Friday took a tough stance on China, stepping up their language on Taiwan and omitting some conciliatory references from past statements, including to “one China” policies. A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored last month’s Japan-US statement in condemning “coercion” toward Taiwan. Compared with a G7 foreign ministers’ statement in November last year, the statement added members’ concerns over China’s nuclear buildup, although it omitted references to their concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. Also missing were references stressing the desire for “constructive and stable relations with China” and
‘CROWN JEWEL’: Washington ‘can delay and deter’ Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plans for Taiwan, but it is ‘a very delicate situation there,’ the secretary of state said US President Donald Trump is opposed to any change to Taiwan’s “status quo” by force or extortion and would maintain that policy, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Hugh Hewitt Show host on Wednesday. The US’ policy is to maintain Taiwan’s “status quo” and to oppose any changes in the situation by force or extortion, Rubio said. Hewitt asked Rubio about the significance of Trump earlier this month speaking with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) at the White House, a meeting that Hewitt described as a “big deal.” Asked whether the meeting was an indication of the
RSS