Worldwide Monthly Roundup: Taiwan Carries Out First Execution in Five Years; Singapore Cracks Down on Abolition Group; Iranian Prisoners Continue Peaceful Abolition Protest as at Least 87 Executed in January

Taiwan Carries Out First Execution in Five Years 

On January 16, 2025, Taiwan car­ried out its first exe­cu­tion since April 2020. Huang Linkai, who was sen­tenced to death in 2017 for the 2013 mur­ders of his ex-girl­friend and her moth­er, was exe­cut­ed at the Taipei Detention Center. Although Mr. Huang’s attor­ney filed a last-minute appeal, the execution proceeded. 

There are ques­tions whether Mr. Huang’s exe­cu­tion was in accord with the September 20, 2024 rul­ing by Taiwan’s Constitutional Court, which man­dat­ed that the gov­ern­ment amend cer­tain pro­ce­dur­al rules to bet­ter pro­tect defen­dants’ due process rights. Among these increased pro­tec­tions is the require­ment that the death penal­ty be imposed by a unan­i­mous judge­ment and that the pros­e­cu­tion dis­close this infor­ma­tion to defense coun­sel. However, at the time of Mr. Huang’s exe­cu­tion, his lawyer had not received con­fir­ma­tion that the sen­tenc­ing deci­sion had been unan­i­mous nor had a ​“pre-sen­tenc­ing social inves­ti­ga­tion” been car­ried out. All this, accord­ing to Amnesty International, rais­es doubts as to whether the stan­dard set by the Court is being followed. 

Mr. Huang’s exe­cu­tion not only drew crit­i­cism from human rights and abo­li­tion groups, but also from the European Union, Canada, and Australia. The European Union issued a state­ment call­ing upon Taiwan to ​“apply and main­tain a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um, and to pur­sue a con­sis­tent pol­i­cy towards the full abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in Taiwan.” Canada’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive office in Taiwan and the Australian Office in Taipei shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments in their statements. 

On January 15, 2025, the Taiwan High Court also upheld the death penal­ty for Liang Yu-chih — the first death sen­tence to be hand­ed down since the Constitutional Court’s 2024 rul­ing. Human Rights Watch has called on the nation to halt all exe­cu­tions until the nation­al leg­is­la­ture makes the nec­es­sary legal changes out­lined by the Constitutional Court’s September ruling. 

Coalition of Rights Organizations Condemn Singapore’s Censorship of Death Penalty Activists 

On January 16, 2025, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and eight oth­er orga­ni­za­tions released a joint state­ment con­demn­ing the increas­ing­ly severe restric­tions imposed by the Singaporean gov­ern­ment on the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC), a civ­il rights group active­ly oppos­ing the death penal­ty. Under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019, or POFMA, Singapore author­i­ties may ​“pre­vent the elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion […] of false state­ments of fact” through a vari­ety of mea­sures, such as enforc­ing links to fact-check­ing state­ments, cen­sor­ship of web­sites or social media accounts, and crim­i­nal charges. Since last July, the gov­ern­ment of Singapore has issued sev­en orders under the POFMA tar­get­ing TJC and its activists. The joint state­ment calls the POFMA orders ​“dis­pro­por­tion­ate to any pos­si­ble per­ceived threat” and an attempt by the gov­ern­ment ​“to sti­fle crit­i­cism, in vio­la­tion of the right to free­dom of expres­sion,” and calls for the gov­ern­ment to cease issu­ing such orders.

The most recent POFMA order against TJC, issued on December 20, 2024, deems TJC’s web­site and Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok accounts Declared Online Locations (DOL’s) until December 20, 2026, and fur­ther pro­hibits TJC from receiv­ing any finan­cial or oth­er mate­r­i­al ben­e­fit from oper­at­ing these online plat­forms. The DOL des­ig­na­tion requires TCJ to pub­lish a notice on all their plat­forms warn­ing users that it has ​“com­mu­ni­cat­ed mul­ti­ple false­hoods, and that view­ers should exer­cise cau­tion when access­ing [TJC] infor­ma­tion.” In October, a POFMA order was issued for the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network, a region­al civ­il soci­ety net­work, and in December, a POFMA order was issued to the online pub­li­ca­tion, The Online Citizen, for cov­er­age of the orders issued to TJC. These DOLs are in addi­tion to sev­en Targeted Correction Directions issued by the gov­ern­ment since July to social media com­pa­nies, request­ing them to post cor­rec­tions relat­ing to state­ments made on the nation’s use of the death penalty. 

In response to this lat­est order, TJC has ceased oper­a­tion of all its DOL-des­ig­nat­ed plat­forms for the dura­tion of the two-year peri­od, out of fear that TJC might face crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty for efforts to main­tain, oper­ate, or pub­lish con­tent on their web­site or social media plat­forms and donors could like­wise face crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ties for sup­port­ing their work. In a state­ment issued on January 21, 2025, TJC explained their deci­sion and defend­ed the public’s right to access ​“inde­pen­dent sources of infor­ma­tion and diverse perspectives[.]” 

Iranian Prisoners Continue Peaceful Resistant Efforts As At Least 87 Executed in January 

According to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), 87 exe­cu­tions were car­ried out in Iran in January 2025. Only four were offi­cial­ly report­ed; the remain­der were ver­i­fied and record­ed by IHRNGO. The indi­vid­u­als exe­cut­ed had been con­vict­ed of mur­der (48), drug-relat­ed offens­es (35), and rape (two). Afghan nation­als con­tin­ue to be promi­nent among those exe­cut­ed in January (10), as well as oth­er minori­ties, includ­ing sev­en Kurds and four Baluch. 

In ear­ly January, the Iranian Supreme Court upheld the 2024 death sen­tence of Kurdish civ­il rights activist Pakhshan Azizi. In response, 3,400 indi­vid­u­als, in and out­side Iran, signed a state­ment in sup­port of Ms. Azizi. UN human rights experts expressed alarm at the Iranian Supreme Court’s deci­sion, con­demn­ing what they called the ​“tar­get­ing of Kurdish women activists with polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed charges.” On February 6, 2025, Ms. Azizi’s lawyers explained on X that the Supreme Court reject­ed her motion for retri­al and shared their plans to sub­mit anoth­er retri­al request and fur­ther appeals. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and IHRNGO have all raised con­cern about Ms. Azizi’s imminent execution. 

Despite the government’s con­tin­ued, aggres­sive use of the death penal­ty, non-vio­lent resis­tant efforts with­in Iran per­sist. The pris­on­er-led ​“No Death Penalty Tuesday” week­ly hunger strike move­ment, which began in January 2024, has entered its 54^th week and is now active across at least 35 facil­i­ties — more than dou­ble the num­ber record­ed in August 2024. To mark the cam­paign’s one year anniver­sary, IHRNGO orga­nized a space on X for human rights activists world­wide to share their sol­i­dar­i­ty. Ahmadreza Haeri, one of the found­ing mem­bers of the hunger strike move­ment, impris­oned at Ghezelhesar prison, explained in a writ­ten state­ment: ​“If we all agree on just this one prin­ci­ple of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and make the right to life an unbreak­able red line, we can hope for a brighter future and transitional justice.”