TAIWAN: DEATH PENALTY FOR KIDNAPPINGS ABOLISHED

In its final meeting before the end of the plenary session, the Legislative Yuan passed amendments to the existing Criminal Code scrapping capital punishment from two clauses, which stipulate that a person who “kidnaps another to extort ransom shall be sentenced to death, life imprisonment or imprisonment for not less than seven 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 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.”