President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday defended the Ministry of Justice’s execution of five death row inmates and dismissed concerns that the move violated the International Covenant on Civil Rights.
The executions were carried out on Friday after Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) signed documents authorizing them, sparking protests from anti-death penalty activists, who condemned the Ma administration for ignoring the covenants that it had recognized as domestic laws.
Approached by reporters for comment, Ma yesterday simply said: “No” when asked whether the executions violated the covenants.
While Ma declined to say whether the government would suspend executions in the future, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), at a separate setting yesterday, suggested the death penalty would not be abolished any time soon.
“The executions of capital -punishment were in line with high social expectations and demand for a good public order in a country that respects the rule of law,” he said when approached for a comment on the concerns about the execution voiced by human rights groups.
“In order to stabilize public order and ensure public security, the death penalty should in no way be abolished,” he said.
Saying that “it’s not time to abolish capital punishment,” Wu urged activists in opposition to the use of capital punishment to communicate with the public about abolition of the death penalty and build a consensus on the issue.
Wu added that the government did not violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
“It’s clearly stated in the international human rights covenants that [countries] should refrain from handing down mandatory death penalties except for the most serious crimes,” Wu said.
Although some might feel uncomfortable with the executions, Wu said, all of the people executed were given due process and none of them was wrongfully put to death. Some had even asked for a quick execution, he added.
Wu said that it was also his dream that the death penalty could be ended in the country when the day comes that “everyone has a heart of gold” and that it would make no difference whether capital punishment exists or not.
Saying that it took 100 to 200 years for most European countries to eliminate the death penalty, Wu added that “maybe Taiwan could reach that point in a shorter time, like in several decades or so.”
Wu mentioned the results of several polls suggesting that more than 75 percent of Taiwan’s people are still against an abolition of the death penalty because the majority do not feel satisfied with the public order.
According to a report released yesterday by the Ministry of Justice that compiled the results of nine public surveys conducted by several different organizations between 1993 and 2008, nearly 80 percent of the respondents opposed abolition of the death penalty.
The groups that carried out the polls include the Justice Ministry, the Cabinet’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, Academia Sinica and a poll center operated by the Chinese-language United Daily News.
The report said that over the past 15 years, whenever asked whether they supported the abolition of the death penalty, 70 percent to 80 percent said no.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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