Last Thursday, Vietnam sentenced the country's wealthiest woman to the death penalty. If the appeals do not prevent it, Truong My Lan will be executed in the Asian country for a financial fraud of no less than 12.5 billion dollars. That is, almost 3% of the country's GDP. It is an unusual case for two reasons: because the death penalty is not usually applied to women or to those who commit economic crimes. But Vietnam, one of the countries whose economy is growing the most, seems to follow China's model and has embarked on a fight against corruption that has found in Truong the perfect exemplary case.
However, as happened with Xi Jinping in China, the sentence raises doubt and opens a debate. On the one hand, there is no shortage of those who see in this extreme harshness an internal struggle within the Communist Party, since some of its senior officials are involved; On the other hand, human rights activists point out that it demonstrates how economic and social development does not always imply progress towards more moderate social democratic positions.
For this reason, today we immerse ourselves in the application of the death penalty around the world.
These are the three topics we will touch on.
-
In the 21st century, people are still executed by cutting off their heads.
-
Burmese rebels push democracy against the military.
-
Pessimism spreads through Ukraine.
-
The death penalty in the world
In the 21st century, people are still executed by cutting off their heads.
There are fewer and fewer countries that have the death penalty in force in their penal codes -55-. However, both the number of executions -883 documented in 2022- and the number of capital punishment sentences -2016- has grown in recent years. In this way, more than 28,200 people wait for death on some death row. And these numbers do not take into account those of the country that sentences and executes the most people: China. The Asian giant considers these figures to be a state secret and one can only speculate on their magnitude. Amnesty International considers that both variables continue to exceed one thousand annually.
Execution in the middle of the street in Yemen,
AFP
Only from time to time does China timidly allow us to glimpse how it applies the maximum penalty. This week, for example, national television revealed in an official documentary that a researcher, Huang Yu, was executed in 2016 for having sold state secrets to another country. It is information that serves as a warning to sailors. Because if something characterizes authoritarian countries like China, it is that a fair trial is more of a chimera than a fact.
As if that were not enough, in the 21st century, forms of legal killing persist that seem from other times: beheading, for example, is still used in Saudi Arabia; Modern states like Japan continue to hang prisoners, and the United States searches without much success for the magic formula for a dignified death, with nitrogen as a new – and controversial – lethal element.
![World map of the death penalty: in yellow those who have abolished it.](https://s1.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2024/04/17/Captura%20de%20pantalla%20(166)-k66--650x455@RC.png)
World map of the death penalty: in yellow those who have abolished it.
International Amnesty
While in Europe only Belarus continues to execute convicts, Asia is, by far, the most black continent on Amnesty International's world map. Only Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, Cambodia, the Philippines and some of the 'istans' of Central Asia have abolished capital punishment, and, apart from China, Iran and Saudi Arabia are the countries that apply it most in the world. This confirms that economic development does not necessarily imply a shift towards more humanistic values.
In fact, the debate on the death penalty is still almost non-existent in many Asian countries. At most, executions have been stopped in places like Thailand, where the Spaniard Daniel Sancho faces this punishment for the murder of Edwin Arrieta. The commutation of capital punishment to life imprisonment is an intermediate step applauded in many places, which maintain the first but do not carry it out. In Thailand itself, no prisoners have been killed in the last six years, and something similar is happening in South Korea or Laos, where that period has already exceeded a decade.
![Evolution of executions and death sentences in the world.](https://s2.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2024/04/17/Captura%20de%20pantalla%20(165)-k66--650x455@RC.png)
Evolution of executions and death sentences in the world.
AI
However, taking the step from gray to the yellow that countries that have abolished tooth for tooth are painted with is complex. Especially since the most conservative sectors of the population agree with the Talion law. But that countries like Vietnam reintroduce the maximum penalty for crimes that did not previously receive it, such as economic ones – China no longer imposes it in these cases – is worrying and can be framed in the context of the global advance of authoritarianism and populism.
-
War in Myanmar
Burmese rebels push democracy against the military
In the year with the greatest number of elections, in which more than a billion people go to vote, a fear is being confirmed: the world is increasingly authoritarian. And it is a shift that occurs not only in increasingly strict dictatorships. Also in democratic countries like India, where everything indicates that Narendra Modi will emerge victorious from the elections that start this Friday and will last until June 1.
However, there is a country in which the opposite is happening. Although it is costing blood, sweat and tears. Myanmar, the former Burma, is involved in one of those wars overshadowed by Ukraine and Gaza in which, unlike what is happening in the Sahel, the democratic option advances. Operation 1027, which began last year, is managing to corner the military coup plotters who took power in 2021. The sum of forces of the different rebel groups, also supported by the Free Burma Rangers and the National Unity Government (NUG) , has managed to capture different cities of notable relevance.
Myanmar is on the brink of civil war.
Reuters
![Main image - Myanmar is on the brink of civil war.](https://s1.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2024/04/17/Myawaddy%20Reuters-k66--1200x841@RC.jpg)
![Secondary image 1 - Myanmar is on the brink of civil war.](https://s1.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2024/04/17/Myanmar%20KNLA%20Reuters-k66--1200x851@RC.jpg)
![Secondary image 2 - Myanmar is on the brink of civil war.](https://s3.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2024/04/17/Tailandia%20Reuters-k66--711x841@RC.jpg)
To the point that neighboring China and Thailand have had to put themselves on high alert, as they expect a significant flow of displaced people and fear that the conflict will affect them. The latest success has been the control by Karen guerrillas of Myawaddy, the main transit point for goods between Myanmar and Thailand.
Burmese soldiers are surrendering or deserting in groups – 670 men after the offensive in Myawaddy alone – and, more importantly, neither China nor Thailand are offering assistance to the Military Junta, whose power is weakening much faster than expected. that no one had anticipated. Without a doubt, it is too early to declare victory and the tables can change at any moment, but it seems that the troops are demoralized by the materialization of the old aspiration of rebel unity. It would not hurt if the West supported this change to, for once, strengthen a democracy that is not imposed from the outside but emerges organically internally.
-
Russian invasion
Pessimism spreads through Ukraine
Meanwhile, in the conflict in which the West has been most involved, Ukraine is beginning to show signs of fatigue. To the point that its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has warned that he will lose the war if the United States turns off the tap. There is a rush for Joe Biden to convince Congress to approve the aid package on which kyiv's ability to resist depends. Because ambition has fallen one step: it is no longer about reconquering areas taken by the Russians, but rather about preventing their advance.
![At this rate, there will be nothing left standing in Donbas.](https://s2.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2024/04/17/Ucrania%20AFP-k66--748x524@RC.jpg)
At this rate, there will be nothing left standing in Donbas.
AFP
«And if Ukraine loses the war, other countries will be attacked. “It's a fact,” said Zelensky, who knows perfectly well that time is against him. If the American commitment is not achieved before the next presidential elections and Trump is victorious, Ukraine will find itself in a very compromised situation, even if Europe doubles its contribution to the cause. The one who has the weapons is the United States.
A Russian victory need not prompt new invasions. That is a mantra as repeated in Ukraine as it is baseless. Putin does not have to behave like Hitler, however sweet the comparisons may be. However, he would demonstrate that the West is not capable of subduing an invader in Europe, despite having unanimously considered the need to do so. And it is logical that he will fail if nothing changes, because the help he has provided has been timid. With fear and without the forcefulness with which he supports Israel, despite the words of condemnation he receives.
Is all for today. I hope I have explained well some of what is happening out there. If you are signed up, you will receive this newsletter every Wednesday in your email. And, if you like it, it will be very helpful if you share it and recommend it to your friends.
#Vietnam #clear #Death #corrupt #Basque #Journal