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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Amnesty International calls on Yudhoyono to save Indonesian national from death row

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Global rights organization Amnesty International (AI) is urging President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to call on the Saudi Arabian authorities to postpone the execution of Siti Zainab binti Duhri Rupa, an Indonesian migrant worker on death row.

AI said it had sent a letter to Yudhoyono to convey its response to information that Siti Zainab would be executed. Siti Zainab was sentenced to death for allegedly killing her employer in Saudi Arabia in 1999.

The organization said in its statement that it did not aim to ask for clemency for Siti Zainab’s alleged crime. “However, we also want to convey that we oppose death punishment regardless of the situation,” it said as quoted by kompas.com.

In its letter to President Yudhoyono, AI said it was the right and responsibility of a government in a country to bring an alleged criminal perpetrator to justice.

AI further said, however, that it opposed the death penalty, which it considered the most extreme form of torture. The death sentence also violated the right to live, as stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, two international conventions that Indonesia had ratified, AI said.

“We hope that Mr President can call on the Saudi Arabian Kingdom authorities to change the sentence that has been imposed on her,” said the letter.

Siti Zainal is a migrant worker from Jl. Pasarean KH.M.Cholil in Martajasah village, Bangkalan, Madura, East Java. She departed for Saudi Arabia in 1997.

Source: The Jakarta Post, August 27, 2014
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