Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian has vowed to abol­ish the death penal­ty so that his coun­try can become a nation found­ed on the basis of human rights. In mak­ing his announce­ment, Chen not­ed, ​“Abolishing the death penal­ty has become a world trend. Almost every year there is one coun­try abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty.… Since I became pres­i­dent in 2000, Taiwan launched the cam­paign to abol­ish the death penal­ty by reduc­ing the hand­ing down and exe­cu­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and by mak­ing it hard­er for inmates to receive parole and forc­ing them to pay more com­pen­sa­tion to vic­tims.” The num­ber of exe­cu­tions car­ried out in Taiwan has declined from 32 in 1998 to 17 in 2000 to one so far this year.

(Webinida123, IANS, September 7, 2005) See International Death Penalty. 

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