Vietnam’s government has proposed a further narrowing of its use of the death penalty, part of a broad overhaul of its Penal Code that could also see the authorities increase punishments for “anti-state” acts.
A draft revision of the Code presented to the National Assembly yesterday proposed removing the death penalty for an additional six offences, including drug trafficking, the rape of minors, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, state media reported.
If approved, the revision would leave the death penalty in place for just four crimes: treason, murder, terrorism, and the illegal production of narcotics. The National Assembly is expected to debate the revisions in the coming weeks before voting on them in October.
The move comes after Vietnam last year removed the death penalty for eight criminal offenses, including embezzlement, bribe taking, espionage, illegally transporting narcotics, sabotaging state infrastructure, and “crime aimed at overthrowing the people’s government.” These changes spared the life of real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, who was sentenced to death in 2024 for her role in a $12 billion corruption scandal.
The maximum sentence for all of these crimes is now life imprisonment.
Over the past four decades, Vietnam’s government has gradually reduced the scope of capital punishment. In the 1985 Penal Code, the death penalty applied to 44 offenses, Tuoi Tre reported last week. This dropped to 29 in the 1999 Code, 22 in the 2009 Code, 18 in the 2015 Code, and 10 under the current version, which took effect on July 1, 2025.
Last year, Minister of Justice Nguyen Hai Ninh said that the decision to reduce the use of the death penalty “was based on careful analysis of the nature and severity of the offenses, the value of the interests protected, and the potential for remedying the harm caused.”
The narrowing of the use of capital punishment is part of a wider legal reform effort that could affect hundreds of provisions of Vietnam’s Penal Code. The purpose of the effort is to “streamline” the Code, “improve consistency and better differentiate criminal liability according to the nature, role, and level of danger posed by different types of conduct,” state media reported.
At the same time, however, the Ministry of Public Security is determined to maintain strong sanctions for the most serious offenses – a concern that was also echoed during yesterday’s National Assembly debate.
As such, the latest draft revisions also increase the punishments for certain crimes. These include acts deemed to “infringe upon the interests of the state” (Article 331[2] of the Penal Code) or acts “aim to oppose the Communist Party of Vietnam” (Article 117) – two vaguely worded provisions that have been used liberally against government critics. Among the other changes are the exemption of the police, armed forces, and paramilitary self-defense forces from criminal liability for acts committed while carrying out official duties, and the criminalization of offenses against the Communist Party’s hammer-and-sickle flag, which could soon be punishable by up to three years in prison.
“Vietnam’s criminal laws need to be revised to become more protective of people’s rights, not to facilitate greater abuse by the police,” Elaine Pearson of Human Rights Watch said in a statement earlier this month.
Furthermore, the proposed revisions add nine new criminal offenses to the country’s Penal Code. This includes a new offense covering the establishment of or participation in an organized crime group, as well as crimes relating to “economic management, cybersecurity, high technology, the environment, public safety, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”