The Constitutional Court is to issue a ruling on Friday to determine whether Taiwan will abolish the death penalty, further restrict its implementation or maintain the current practice.
In a statement, the court said it would announce the ruling at 3pm on Friday at the Judicial Office Building in Taipei.
Photo: Taipei Times
Whether Taiwan should abolish the death penalty has been a topic of intense debate in recent years, and if the court decides to do so by ruling it unconstitutional, such a decision is almost certain to send shockwaves throughout society.
The case was brought by 37 prisoners currently on death row challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty in Taiwan, with the Ministry of Justice defending the statutory punishment as constitutional.
With the recusal of three justices, the case is being reviewed by the remaining 12 justices, who are to reach a ruling based on a majority vote.
While advocacy by civil society groups to end capital punishment in Taiwan has gathered momentum over the past two decades, polls conducted by the ministry and other organizations consistently show strong public support for its retention.
The court was supposed to render its ruling by the end of July, about three months after oral arguments ended, but it has since pushed back the deadline by two months, without explaining the reason for the delay.
According to Article 26 of the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法), the court should render a ruling within three months after the conclusion of oral arguments, but this deadline can be postponed by two months if necessary.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS