Vietnam
Foreign Nationals and the Death Penalty
Death Penalty Overview
Since January 2004, the publishing of
statistics on use of the death penalty in
Vietnam has been classi ed as a state secret,
making obtaining data on capital punishment
a dif cult task (Vietnam Committee on
Human Rights (VCHR) 2016). Amnesty
International estimates that the number of
individuals executed as well as those
sentenced to death could be much higher
than the gures they publish in their annual
reports. In 2016, new information was made
available on the use of the death penalty by
the state. This revealed the magnitude of the
use of capital punishment, and saw Vietnam
join the top ve executing countries,
estimated to be the third-most proli c
executioner of prisoners in the world after
China and Iran. It is thought that Vietnam’s
death row is amongst the 12 largest in the
world, with only four other Asian countries
having more death-sentenced prisoners
(VCHR 2016). The pace of death sentencing
in Vietnam continues to increase, resulting in
further overcrowding in prisons that already
constitute inhumane environments. Annual
reports since 2016 have continued to reveal
that the use of capital punishment in the
country is far more extensive than originally
thought.
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The most recent statistics published by
Amnesty International revealed that an
estimated 119 were sentenced to death in
2021, with at least 1,200 individuals currently
known to be on death row. The number of
annual executions is mostly uncertain; an
exception was in 2018, when the Minister of
Justice, Lê Thành Long, revealed that at least
122 individuals had been executed. Since
2018, comprehensive gures remain
unavailable to the public, but authorities
continue to disclose partial information