May 30
TAIWAN:
Death penalty for kidnappings abolished
The Legislative Yuan was to clear all legislation that has bipartisan consensus
by midnight this morning after the last day of the current session yesterday.
The legislature spent most of yesterday clearing bills in its final meeting
before the end of this plenary session.
A total of 82 items of legislation were scheduled to pass their second and
third readings in the meeting, with reviews continuing late into the evening.
Cross-party negotiation earlier this week scheduled the meeting to continue
until midnight.
While the existing Criminal Code stipulates that a person who "kidnaps another
to extort ransom shall be sentenced to death, life imprisonment or imprisonment
for not less than 7 years" and that "if aggravated injury results from the
offense, the offender shall be sentenced to death, life imprisonment, or
imprisonment for not less than 10 years," the amendments made yesterday
scrapped the capital punishment from these 2 clauses.
The bill was proposed by the Executive Yuan, who referred in its proposal to
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by
Taiwan in 2009 and says that in countries that have not abolished the death
penalty, "the sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes
in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime
and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant and to the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."
(source: Taipei Times)
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