Taiwan’s claim to be a regional bastion of human rights is undermined by its retention of capital punishment, advocates say as they campaign to exonerate the nation’s oldest death row prisoner.
Wang Xin-fu (王信福) is among 38 inmates in Taiwan awaiting execution, which is carried out by gunshot and without advance notice once all appeals are exhausted.
At 69, Wang is Taiwan’s most elderly prisoner on death row and has consistently maintained his innocence.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
Rights groups led by the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty have launched a campaign to exonerate Wang, saying he was wrongfully convicted as a joint offender for the murder of a policeman in 1990.
Wang had been detained in his youth and classified by Taiwan’s then-authoritarian government as a “thug.”
He was sentenced to death for supplying a gun to a “lackey” and ordering him to shoot the victim, based on testimonies from the shooter and witnesses.
However, advocates say there are “obvious flaws” in the conviction, from inconsistent testimony, allegations of police torture against a witness, a lack of motive and no fingerprints.
“He is a so-called ‘bad guy,’ but bad guys also have rights. He should not be sentenced for a crime that’s not his doing,” alliance executive director Lin Hsin-yi (林欣怡) said.
Wang fled to China after learning he was wanted and was only arrested in 2006 upon returning to Taiwan for treatment of an eye ailment.
He was convicted and the Taiwanese Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in a final ruling in 2011.
In November, advocates appealed to the Control Yuan, after the office of the top prosecutor rejected their request to file a “special appeal” for Wang — one of the only ways to challenge a final conviction.
That tactic has previously worked.
In 2018, the Control Yuan recommended that the prosecutor-general file a special appeal for death row prisoner Hsieh Chih-hung (謝志宏), who had been jailed for 19 years for murder. That eventually led to his acquittal.
Now a free man, Hsieh campaigns for abolishing the death penalty, saying his and other exonerations show the capital punishment system is fallible.
Campaigners point to one of Taiwan’s most disputed and lengthy cases, when a court in 2012 quashed the convictions of three men sentenced to death over the murder of a couple two decades ago, after they had undergone a string of trials and retrials. Another high-profile case came the year before when a military court declared that an air force private executed 14 years previously for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl was innocent.
“The government thinks carrying out executions is the will of the people, but does that really solve the problems?” Hsieh told reporters.
Another death row prisoner that advocates campaign for is Chiou Ho-shun (邱和順), who has been incarcerated for more than three decades.
Capital punishment remains popular in Taiwan.
Despite its frequent use against dissidents during decades of martial law, most polls show Taiwanese still support the death penalty even as the nation has become one of the most progressive democracies in Asia.
About 35 prisoners have been put to death since 2010, when Taiwan resumed executions after a four-year hiatus, including two since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in 2016.
Advocates have criticized Tsai’s government — which has embraced progressive issues such as gay marriage — for continuing with the executions.
Tsai has called abolishing capital punishment is “a difficult issue to deal with” due to the lack of support from the public that would require “a long process, a long time” to change.
The Ministry of Justice said it restarted a task force in 2017 aimed at facilitating gradual abolition and has been studying alternatives while trying to build a public consensus.
“Abolishing the death penalty is an international trend in recent years and it’s the long-term direction our country has been working on,” the ministry said in a statement.
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported
RSS