Vietnam abolishes death penalty for spying, anti-state activities
Vietnam has abolished the death penalty for eight crimes including espionage, graft and attempting to overthrow the government, state media said Wednesday.
The number of offences facing capital punishment will be almost halved from an original 18 to 10 from July, according to the penal code approved by the National Assembly, the official Bao Chinh Phu news portal reported.
According to the amended law, the crimes no longer punishable by death include attempting to overthrow the administration, sabotaging state facilities, production and trade of counterfeit medicine, illegal transportation of narcotics, sabotaging peace and waging war, espionage, property embezzlement and bribe-taking.
Convicts would instead be given the maximum sentence of life in prison.
Minister of Public Security Luong Tam Quang said "the current structure of capital punishment was problematic and, in some cases, misaligned with evolving socio-economic conditions and the realities of crime prevention."
One of the reasons for the move given by Minister of Justice Nguyen Hai Ninh was that in most cases people sentenced to death for the above crimes were not actually executed.
"The abolishment of capital publishment for several crimes will also serve international cooperation work, especially when Vietnam is promoting closer relations on the basis of mutual trust," Ninh was reported as saying.
Vietnam has carried out death sentences by lethal injection since 2013 when it replaced execution by firing squad.
The number of executions has not been made public, but Amnesty International estimates more than 1,200 people were on death row in Vietnam by the end of 2023.
Under Vietnamese law, those sentenced to death for the above eight crimes before July 1 will have their sentences converted to life imprisonment by the chief judge of the Supreme People's Court.
tmh/sjc/mtp
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Bloomberg
Vietnam Passes Law to Tackle Bank Crisis, Resolving Bad Debts
Vietnam's parliament passed a revised law on credit institutions, bolstering the central bank's authority to ensure the safety of the banking system while offering long-awaited legal clarity for commercial lenders to resolve non-performing loans. Under the legislation, which was approved by the National Assembly Friday and takes effect from Oct. 15, the State Bank of Vietnam is authorized to provide special unsecured loans with zero lending rates to troubled banks - a power previously held by the Prime Minister.
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
Asian American leaders urge their communities to stand by Latinos, denounce ICE raids
As federal immigration raids continue to upend life in Los Angeles, Asian American leaders are rallying their communities to raise their voices in support of Latinos, who have been the primary targets of the enforcement sweeps, warning that neighborhoods frequented by Asian immigrants could be next. Organizers say many Asian immigrants have already been affected by the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants working in the country without documentation. Dozens of Southeast Asian immigrants in Los Angeles and Orange counties whose deportation orders had been on indefinite hold have been detained after showing up for routine check-ins at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, according to immigration attorneys and advocacy groups. In recent months, a number of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese immigrants whose deportation orders had been stayed — in some cases for decades — have been told that those orders will now be enforced. The Asian immigrants being targeted are generally people who were convicted of a crime after arriving in the U.S., making them eligible for deportation after their release from jail or prison. In most cases, ICE never followed through because the immigrants had lived in the U.S. long enough that their home countries no longer recognized them as citizens. 'Our community is much more silent, but we are being detained in really high numbers,' said Connie Chung Joe, chief executive of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California. 'There's such a stigma and fear that, unlike the Latinx community that wants to fight and speak out about the injustices, our community's first reaction is to go down and get more and more hidden.' On Thursday, more than a half dozen leaders representing Thai, Japanese and South Asian communities held a news conference in Little Tokyo urging community members to stand together and denounce the federal action as an overreach. President Trump came into office in January vowing to target violent criminals for deportation. But amid pressure to raise deportation numbers, administration officials in recent months have shifted their focus to farmworkers, landscapers, street vendors and other day laborers, many of whom have been working in the country for decades. While an estimated 79% of undocumented residents in L.A. County are natives of Mexico and Central America, Asian immigrants make up the second-largest group, constituting 16% of people in the county without legal authorization, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Across the U.S., Indians make up the third-largest group of undocumented residents, behind Mexicans and Salvadorans. According to the Pew Research Center, the L.A. metropolitan area is home to the largest populations of Cambodians, Koreans, Indonesians, Filipinos, Thai and Vietnamese people in the U.S. So far, the highest profile raids in Southern California have centered on Latino neighborhoods, targeting car washes, restaurants, home improvement stores, churches and other locales where undocumented residents gather and work. But Asian businesses have not been immune. A raid outside a Home Depot in Hollywood happened across the street from Thai Town, where organizers have seen ICE agents patrolling the streets. In late May, Dept. of Homeland Security agents raided a Los Angeles-area nightclub, arresting 36 people they said were Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants in the country without authorization. In Little Bangladesh, immigration agents recently detained 16 people outside a grocery store, according to Manjusha P. Kulkarni, executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of more than 50 community-based organizations. 'They will come for us even more in the coming days and weeks,' Kulkarni said. 'So we are only protected when we're in solidarity with our fellow Angelenos.' From June 1 to 10, at the start of the federal sweeps, ICE data shows that 722 people were arrested in the Los Angeles region. The figures were obtained by the Deportation Data Project, a repository of enforcement data at UC Berkeley Law. A Times analysis found that 69% of those arrested during that period had no criminal convictions. Nearly 48% were Mexican, 16% were from Guatemala and 8% from El Salvador. Forty-seven of the 722 individuals detained — or about 6% — were from Asian countries. 'We know the fear is widespread and it is deep,' said Assemblymember Mike Fong, a Democrat whose district takes in Monterey Park and West San Gabriel Valley, areas with large Asian immigrant populations. Los Angeles City Council members Nithya Raman and Ysabel Jurado spoke of the repercussions the raids were having on immigrant communities. Raman is Indian American, and Jurado is Filipino American. Jurado said undocumented Filipinos make up a sizeable portion of the region's caregivers, tending to both elderly people and young children. 'Their work reflects the deepest values of our communities: compassion, service and interdependence,' Jurado said. 'Their labor is essential, and their humanity must be honored.' Jurado and Raman called on the federal government to end the raids. 'This is such an important moment to speak out and to ensure that the Latino community does not feel alone,' Raman said. 'I also want to make it clear to every single person who is Asian American, these aren't just raids on others. They're raids on us.' Staff writer Rachel Uranga contributed to this report. This article is part of The Times' equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California's economic divide.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
'Mass scale' abuses in Cambodia scam centres: Amnesty
While looking for jobs on Facebook, Jett thought he had found a well-paying opportunity working in online customer service in his home country of Thailand. Following instructions to travel across the kingdom, the 18-year-old ended up being trafficked across the border to a compound in Svay Rieng, Cambodia. There Jett was beaten, tortured and forced to perpetrate cyberscams, part of a multibillion-dollar illicit industry that has defrauded victims around the world. He was forcibly held at the compound for seven months, during which "there was no monetary compensation, and contacting family for help was not an option", he told AFP. "Will I survive, or will I die?" Jett (a pseudonym to protect his identity) recalled asking himself. Abuses in Cambodia's scam centres are happening on a "mass scale", a report published Thursday by Amnesty International said, accusing the Cambodian government of being "acquiescent" and "complicit" in the exploitation of thousands of workers. The report says there are at least 53 scam compounds in Cambodia, clustered mostly around border areas, in which organised criminal groups carry out human trafficking, forced labour, child labour, torture, deprivation of liberty and slavery. Amnesty's Montse Ferrer said that despite law enforcement raids on some scam compounds, the number of compounds in Cambodia has increased, "growing and building" in the last few months and years. "Scamming compounds are allowed to thrive and flourish by the Cambodian government," she told AFP. The Cambodian government has denied the allegations. Jett was made to romance his wealthy, middle-aged compatriots on social media, gaining their trust until they could be tricked into investing in a fake business. "If the target fell into the trap, they would be lured to keep investing more until they were financially drained -- selling their land, cars, or all their assets," he said. Scam bosses demanded exorbitant targets of one million baht ($31,000) per month from overworked employees –- a target only about two percent of them reached, he said. "Initially, new recruits wouldn't face physical harm, but later, reprimands escalated to beatings, electric shocks, and severe intimidation," Jett told AFP. - 'Woefully ineffective' – The other employees in his multi-storey building were mostly Chinese, with some Vietnamese and some Thais. Amnesty International says none of the ex-scammers of the 58 they interviewed for the report were Cambodian, and "overwhelmingly" were not paid for their labour. Most of the scam centre bosses were Chinese, Jett said, adding that they used Thai interpreters when meting out punishments to those who performed poorly. "Sometimes they'd hold meetings to decide who would be eliminated tomorrow," he said. "Or who will be sold (to another scam compound)? Or did anyone do something wrong that day? Did they break the company rules?" He claims a colleague falsely accused him of wrongdoing to the Chinese bosses for a bounty. He pleaded his innocence but they "just didn't listen". Ferrer said Cambodian government interventions against the scam centres had been "woefully ineffective", often linked to corruption by individual police officers at a "systemic and widespread level". Government spokesman Pen Bona told AFP: "Cambodia is a victimised country used by criminals to commit online scams. We do recognise that there is such thing, but Cambodia has taken serious measures against the problem." The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in April that the scam industry was expanding outside hotspots in Southeast Asia, with criminal gangs building up operations as far as South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and some Pacific islands. In Cambodia, Jett ultimately staged a dramatic escape after a particularly severe beating in which his arm was broken. He jumped out of a building, passed out and later woke up in hospital. "Whether I died or survived, both options seemed good to me at the time," he said. "Consider it a blessing that I jumped." He is now seeking legal recourse with assistance from Thai government agencies who have categorised him as a victim of human trafficking. But Ferrer said effective action to help end the industry must come from the Cambodian government. "We are convinced that if the Cambodian government wanted to put a stop they would be able to put a stop. At the very least they would be able to do much more than what we're seeing," she said. suy-sjc/pdw/sco
