"死刑及處決報告2010" 記者招待會（國際特赦組織香港分會）

時間：2011/03/28 早上10:00

地點：香港外國記者會(The Hughes Room

左起：M. Ravi （新加坡人權律師、楊偉光辯護律師）、區美寶（國際特赦組織香港分會 總幹事）、林欣怡（廢除死刑推動聯盟執行長） 

台灣廢除死刑推動聯盟執行長 林欣怡發言稿如下：

Dear friends, I’m very unhappy to be here in Hong Kong today.

For four years, from the end of 2005 to early 2010, there were no executions in Taiwan.

Last year, Taiwan started executions again. In less than one year it has executed 9 people, and that is the only reason I am here in Hong Kong speaking to you now.

When Taiwan started up executions again, this was terrible news for the international community, and especially for activists in Asia who are still fighting to end the death penalty in their countries.

I deeply regret that Taiwan failed you. Taiwan is no longer a model country helping to guide the global movement against the death penalty. The tragic change in Taiwan is one reason that the TAEDP has decided to start releasing a yearly report on the death penalty in Taiwan every March, to help the international community monitor the situation.

Let me explain what has happened in Taiwan over the last year, and why these 9 executions violated the ICCPR and Taiwan’s domestic law.

On April 30th last year, Taiwan put 4 people to death. On March 4 this year, it executed another 5 people. In total, Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu — who has been minister for less than one year — has executed nine people in this short time.

If we look at AI’s newest report, actually this rate of executions puts Taiwan in the top 10 countries in terms of executing the most people.

In 2009, Taiwan ratified the ICCPR. Because Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations, Taiwan’s legislature passed legislation to make the ICCPR into a domestic law.

So with no executions for four years, and then Taiwan ratifying the ICCPR, Taiwan was considered on the way to ending the death penalty.

But the majority of Taiwanese still support the death penalty. Several surveys over the years show that between 70 and 80 % of Taiwanese support the death penalty.

Early last year, Legislator Wu Yu-sheng started pushing the previous minister of justice to restart executions. Wu demanded that the minister of justice execute the 44 people on death row, and this sparked a major public controversy. Very quickly, the public pressure grew to restart executions.

Much of the public did not realize that Taiwan had stopped executing people for four years, and they felt that the government had deceived them. Even some legislators said they didn’t know and that the Ministry of Justice had tricked them.

But the truth is, the previous government released an official policy in 2005 on gradually ending the death penalty. Later it stopped executions, and when the new government took over in 2008, the new justice minister, Wang Ching-feng, openly told the legislature she was against the death penalty.

In 2008, representatives from the TAEDP, the World Coalition against the Death Penalty, Amnesty International and the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network met with President Ma Ying-jeou. All President Ma would say on the death penalty is that he had full confidence in Wang Ching-feng and supported her opinion.

But in June last year, after Wang Ching-feng had resigned and the new minister had carried out 4 executions, the TAEDP visited President Ma again. This time, President Ma told us that he isn’t a strong supporter of abolition, but he would be happy to see it happen.

Rather than standing by an ideal of human rights, politicians in Taiwan are using public opinion as their excuse.

But public opinion can change. It is not set in stone. According to surveys by Taiwan’s central research institute, about 70 to 80 % of Taiwanese support the death penalty. But over the past 10 years, the percentage that supports ending the death penalty has grown from 9% to 21%.

What we want to make clear, is that although this year has been a blow for human rights in Taiwan, we will continue to work to end the death penalty in Taiwan. This is a worthy goal and we believe, as long as we keep promoting a public dialogue, the people and political leaders of Taiwan will come to understand why we must give up the death penalty.

Today, there are 41 people in Taiwan who could be executed at any moment. Since Taiwan restarted executions, these people are panicked. Their cases are finalized. The TAEDP’s lawyers have looked at each prisoner’s case files. When we find serious problems with the cases, our lawyers apply for retrials or extraordinary appeals, but so far I cannot give you a single successful example.

In 2010 we applied to the Constitutional Court of Taiwan and asked the justices to review several problems with the death penalty system. But the justices decided not to review the problems. Instead, they dismissed our applications. 

This means there isn’t much hope of a judicial review for these 41 people either.

The fact is that the 9 executions in the past year all violated the ICCPR. And we would like to remind Taiwan that the ICCPR is now domestic law.

First of all, 7 of the people executed in the past year did not have lawyers for the whole legal process. This violates Article 14 of the ICCPR.

According to Article 6, Paragraph 4 of the ICCPR, all persons sentenced to death have the right to apply for a commutation or pardon. In Taiwan, we have a law that grants this right, but in practice, it doesn’t exist.

We helped all 44 of Taiwan’s death row inmates apply for commutations in 2009. The government never replied to these applications.

The UN Human Rights Committee has said before that prisoners have a right to receive a response to their application.

According to Taiwan’s law on the ICCPR, the government has to follow the complete content of the ICCPR, as well as the opinions of the UN Human Rights Committee.

Here are a few of the recommendations in our report:

1. Bring back the moratorium.

2. Set a timeline to end the death penalty and set concrete steps, including introducing alternative measures like strict parole regulations.

3. Amend the law. First of all, a death sentence should require a unanimous decision by the bench. Secondly, all defendants in death row cases should have the guarantee to a lawyer for the complete court process. Thirdly, the amnesty law needs to be amended to ensure that right to apply for amnesty is respected.