The Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty and three European offices in Taiwan will organize a series of activities early next month to encourage the abolition of the death penalty and help advance the debate on the issue.
One of the centerpiece events will be a seminar on Nov. 6 and Nov. 7 called “New Perspectives on Abolishing the Death Penalty,” organized by the alliance and the German Institute in Taipei, the alliance said on Friday.
German academics will discuss the issue from a variety of perspectives such as the relationship between the abolition of the death penalty and social safety, victim protection and prison reform.
“The objective of Taiwan’s Criminal Code is to re-educate and reform prisoners, not to kill them,” said an alliance worker, who expected that the activities would help promote human rights and encourage debate on the issue.
The worker, who only gave her surname Chiu because she only volunteers for the organization, also suggested that Taiwan should learn from Germany’s experience, where there have been considerable achievements in prisoner re-education.
The alliance said no individuals have been executed in Taiwan since 2005, but there are 31 convicts who have been sentenced to death.
One of the individuals was sentenced on the Double Ten national holiday, which is also the World Day Against the Death Penalty.
The French office will hold a conference on Nov. 3 on how Taiwan can move toward abolishing the death penalty, in partnership with National Taipei University and the Taiwan Law Society, with the support of the European Economic and Trade Office.
Two French experts, Sylvie Bukhari de Pontual, a lawyer and member of the Bar of Paris, and Michel Forst, general secretary of the French National Consultative Commission for Human Rights, will talk about the need for criminal code reform and abolition of the death penalty, and on the death penalty in the context of international law, the office said.
A film featuring Robert Badinter, senator and former French minister of justice, who is renowned for his activism in support of abolishing capital punishment in France, will also be screened at the conference.
British experts will also share their experiences with Taiwan on Nov. 13 and Nov. 14.
They will discuss how to advance the process of eliminating the death penalty in Taiwan.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS