All 11 death penalty facilities across Vietnam were busy through 2021, according to a report by the UK-based human rights organization.
Amnesty International has just released a report on the death penalty situation around the world in 2021, including Vietnam.
Notably, the report states that Vietnam is the country that issues and enforces the most death penalty in Southeast Asia, and one of the countries with the highest numbers of the death penalty in the world.
According to this organization, in 2021, the Vietnamese regime issued at least 119 death sentences, ranking seventh in the world, however, the human rights organization working to protect human rights and abolish the death penalty also suggest that the actual number could be even higher.
In addition, the number of death row inmates currently awaiting execution is more than 1,200.
The Vietnamese government has so far classified information about the death penalty as a state secret.
Speaking at the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2019, a representative of the Ministry of Justice repeated this principle to justify the Vietnamese government’s failure to release data on the death penalty.
However, this number is still occasionally revealed indirectly through articles in the state press, which is also the main source of information that organizations including Amnesty International rely on for statistics and monitoring of the death penalty in Vietnam.
For example, in an article published on the Tieng Chuong page of the Committee on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control and the Prevention of Drug and Prostitution in September 2021, it was revealed that the number of death sentences had increased by 30% compared with the previous year, however, the specific number was not mentioned.
Talking to Radio Free Asia via messaging app, a human rights lawyer talked about the issue of death penalty information in Vietnam under the condition of anonymity:
“According to the provisions of Decree 43/2020, the Ministry of Public Security is responsible for reporting and making state statistics on the execution of the death penalty. However, this decree does not specify whether these statistics are made quarterly or yearly and the reporting responsibility of the Ministry of Public Security is to whom and how to report.
These reports are also not required to be made available to the public.
Here the inquirer can tacitly assume that this report is classified as confidential.
The secrecy of the death penalty sentencing/execution in Vietnam can mean that the Vietnamese regime does not want to be reported by human rights organizations or pressured by European states to abolish the death penalty.”
This lawyer added that keeping the death penalty data secret is simply to avoid outside pressure, and the Vietnamese people, according to him, “have no voice to ask the state to abolish or retain the death penalty.”
The one-party state’s Criminal Code currently applies the death penalty for 18 out of the 314 crimes, which the most is the group of crimes of “infringing upon national security.”
But in fact, Amnesty International statistics show that drug-related crimes accounted for most of the death sentences issued in Vietnam in the past year, with 93 out of 119 death sentences.
The death sentences that attract a lot of public attention in 2021 must include two death sentences for Mr. Le Dinh Cong and Le Dinh Chuc in Dong Tam commune, My Duc district, Hanoi.
These two were charged with “murder, resisting law enforcement officers” during a raid by thousands of police officers at dawn on January 9, 2020, that resulted in the deaths of Mr. Le Dinh Kinh, and three police officers.
Our reporter contacted Mr. Le Hong Son, Deputy Minister and Chief of Office of the Ministry of Justice, to ask for an interview on this issue but received no response.
Thoibao.de (Translated)
