Vietnam has abolished the death penalty for eight criminal offenses, in a move that brings it closer in line to international norms.
On Wednesday, Vietnam’s Parliament unanimously ratified amendments to its penal code that end capital punishment for embezzlement, espionage, attempts to overthrow the government and state infrastructure sabotage, according to the authorities. The change also applied to crimes of counterfeiting medicines, transporting illegal drugs, accepting bribes and waging wars against the nation. The harshest penalty for those crimes was changed to life in prison.
A high-profile beneficiary of the change would be Truong My Lan, a real-estate tycoon who was sentenced to death in a $12 billion fraud case last year.
But Nguyen Minh Duc, a police lieutenant general and deputy chair of the parliamentary committee on national defense and security, said the revised law would help Vietnam’s yearslong anticorruption drive. Some countries have refused to hand over fugitives wanted for corruption because of Vietnam’s use of capital punishment.
This week, the legislature is also considering a law on extradition to facilitate repatriation of fugitives.
In 2017, Germany accused Vietnam of abducting a man who was seeking asylum in Berlin. He was later convicted of embezzlement in Vietnam.
Vietnam does not disclose how many people are on death row. But a report from prosecutors showed that in recent years thousands of prisoners have been sentenced to death and hundreds executed.
Capital punishment used to apply to many more offenses in Vietnam, said Nguyen Ngoc Chi, a former deputy head of the law department at Vietnam National University in Hanoi. In 1985, the death penalty could be issued for 44 crimes, he said, adding that number had now been reduced to 10, including rioting and rape.
“I expect that the death penalty will be abolished totally in Vietnam,” he said.
Tung Ngo is a Times reporter and researcher based in Hanoi, Vietnam.
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