Taipei, March 4 (CNA) An alliance opposing capital punishment held a candlelight vigil Friday night to protest the execution of five death row inmates and lashed out at President Ma Ying-jeou and the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).
The inmates were executed at three prisons in the evening, less than a year after the MOJ resumed the enforcement of death penalty last April, ending an unofficial moratorium that had existed since 2005.
Dozens of advocates, led by the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty (TAEDP) , made a brief statement before placing five candles and five black mourning bands at the gates of the MOJ. They also observed a five-minute silence in protest.
"We have said too much, but the MOJ never officially responds to the controversy. We decide not to talk tonight, " said Lin Hsin-yi, Executive Director of the TAEDP.
In a press release, the anti-death penalty organization criticized President Ma, who personally apologized to the family of Chiang Kuo-ching, a young soldier wrongly convicted and executed 14 years ago, and who now "turns around and carries out five more executions that may well be wrongful."
The TAEDP, which claimed that some death-row inmates were wrongly convicted, said it will disclose and discuss details of the five cases next week.
Ma reiterated that Taiwan signed two United Nations human rights covenants -- the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights -- in 2009 and described the signature of the covenants as an achievement, said Lin Feng-cheng, Executive Director of the Judicial Reform Foundation.
According to the enforcement rules of the two covenants, the government should complete a review within two years to decide if capital punishment violates human rights and signatories should not carry out executions before related procedures concerning requests for amnesty have been completed, he said.
"What President Ma has done was not in line with the covenants at all, " Lin said.
"It took 15 years to prove Chiang's innocence and there should never be another Chiang in Taiwan, " he added, referring to the wrongfully executed soldier.
Lin also criticized Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu, saying that he was handed the position because of his pledge to carry out executions. Nine executions have been carried out since Tseng became minister in March 2010.
Taiwan's resumption of executions last year was criticized by the European Union as well as human rights groups such as Amnesty International.
Wang Ching-feng, Tseng's predecessor as minister of justice, resigned amid a political storm sparked by her statement that she would not sign any death warrants during her term.
In an MOJ statement, the five inmates executed Friday were identified as Guang Chung-yen, Wang Kuo-hua, Chung Teh-shu, Wang Chih-huang and Chuang Tien-chu.
Forty convicts remain on the death row, according to official tallies. (By Chris Wang) enditem/jc