Taiwan Association to End the Death Penalty, TAEDP
台灣廢除死刑推動聯盟
Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty (TAEDP) was formed in 2003 by a group of human rights activists, legal reform advocates, and people concerned with the misuse of capital punishment.
The original impetus for forming the organization came from the pain of being unable to prevent the executions of Chiang Guo-qin, Lu Zheng, and other capital punishment cases, as well as the then-ongoing Hsu Tzu-chiang case. In order to prevent innocent lives from being put to death, this required changing the system and stopping the country from continuing to use its violent application of capital punishment.
TAEDP believes that to reduce crime, one needs to seriously understand the contributing background factors and to work hard to eliminate social discrimination and inequality. Outside of providing support regarding capital punishment cases, at the same time, TAEDP provides legal support, conducts research, initiatives for social dialogue, carries out education, calls for prison reform, and conducts research and publishes.
TAEDP looks forward to the day that Taiwan can be a country without the death penalty. The groups that jointly established TAEDP include the Judicial Reform Foundation, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Taipei Bar Association, the Soochow University Zhang Foquan Human Rights Research Center, and etc. Because of these organizations, -TAEDP has been able to support many Taiwanese social movements and cooperate with international civil society.
In the path to the abolition of the death penalty, TAEDP aims to deepen democratic education and social communication. From 2018 to 2019, TAEDP held workshops for civic discussion to rationally reflect on alternatives to the death penalty across Taiwan, in collaboration with community colleges.