Taipei Minister without Portfolio Hsu Chih-hsiung said...

Taipei Minister without Portfolio Hsu Chih-hsiung said that an anti-terrorism law approved by the country's Cabinet that included the death penalty did not contradict the government's goal of abolishing executions. "It's indeed the ultimate goal of both the Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan to abolish the death penalty and we've been making efforts to achieve the goal," Hsu said. "However, it's a time-consuming process and can only be achieved by gradually phasing it out," he added. Among the obstacles the Cabinet faced was that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) didn't have an absolute majority in the legislature. The proposal also lacked universal support among the public, some of whom feared that abolishing the death penalty could send the wrong message to violent criminals. To gradually phase out the death penalty, Hsu said that the Cabinet had approved draft amendments to the Criminal Code. The draft would also raise the threshold for death-row inmates to get their sentences commuted.