MICHAEL MATHES in Hanoi
Jan. 20, 2000
A growing number of people and groups are expressing opposition to the death penalty, but most do not dare speak out against the Government on the issue, according to a leading dissident.
That may be changing.
The country's boldest Buddhist monk, Venerable Thich Quang Do, recently called on communist Hanoi to "follow the example of civilized nations" and abolish capital punishment altogether.
The pronouncement, in the form of a letter to the communist leadership, marks the first time a major Vietnamese figure has called for an end to the practice, he said yesterday from his Zen monastery in Ho Chi Minh City.
"There are many people like me who oppose [the death penalty] but do not dare speak out," he said.
Mr Do, who is in his 70s and in frail health, is a senior official in the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, which publicized the January 15 letter.
He has served 17 years either in jail or internal exile, and has been accused of violating "national security" interests - a charge that can carry the death penalty.
Such sentences have "particularly dangerous implications for Vietnam", he argued.
"The due process of law is not yet guaranteed," he wrote. "Unfair trials may lead to irreversible miscarriages of justice in which innocent people may be killed."
Vietnam is buckling under the stress of rising violent crime, a flood of drug trafficking, and social unrest - trends that Hanoi has historically tried to suppress through a powerful penal system - yet there are signs that Hanoi is rethinking its approach to the legal issue.
Last year Prime Minister Phan Van Khai let it slip that he disliked the firing squad and that too many prisoners were being executed.
And the National Assembly, the country's top legislative body, recently approved a revised Penal Code that reduces the number of capital crimes from 44 to 29.
When the move was first publicly tabled last April, an Assembly spokesman said the goal of the measure was to effectively eliminate the death penalty from all economic crimes as an expression of "the humanitarian consideration and features of our regime".
Official figures reveal 1999 to have been quite deadly, however, with 84 death sentences meted out from January to November - nearly three times the official 1998 figure. The real figure is likely to be far higher.
A judge in Nghe An, one of 61 provinces in Vietnam, recently conceded that last year at least 40 people had been condemned to the firing squad for drug trafficking in his province alone.
"Reality shows that more capital punishment is not the answer," admitted Nguyen Quoc Viet, who heads the Justice Ministry's Penal Code Department.
Mr. Viet concedes that there are "liberals" who argue for abolition of capital punishment, but he believes the populace as a whole is behind the death penalty.