VIETNAM MAKES NUMBER OF DEATH SENTENCES A TOP STATE SECRET

in a decision signed Monday, Khai also listed documents related to trials involving national security as top secret, said the official from the prime minister´s office. That would include the files of several high-profile political and religious dissidents recently tried for espionage.
Khai also listed the guidelines and schedules of important and complicated trials as off limits, the official said. He did not elaborate.
Until recently, the head of the People´s Supreme Court still presented the number of death sentences handed down by courts nationwide in an annual report to the National Assembly, which was broadcast live on national television.
In 2003, the number of people sentenced to death was at least 110, while 69 people were executed, according to information compiled from state media.
Meanwhile, six men were executed by a firing squad Tuesday in Ho Chi Minh City after being convicted of either murder or drug trafficking, the Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper reported.
In another development on Wednesday, the Radical members of the European Parliament presented a parliamentary question with regard to the summary execution of a farmer named Nih.
The text of the PQ states:
“On December 13, 2003 a group of Vietnamese paramilitary police from the Dak Doa district surrounded the village of Plei O Dot, in Gia Lai province, and arrested two villagers named Nih, 41, and So, 44, both Christians and supporters of the Montagnard Foundation Inc. and the Transnational Radical Party.
“They were both taken to the district jail and tortured with blows and electric shocks. Nih refused to answer questions or to renounce Christ. Major Tuan, of the district police, stabbed him in the chest then slit his throat.
“On December 15, the Vietnamese police returned Nih’s corpse to his family, but forbid them to hold a funeral. They declared that they wanted to show the villagers what happens to whom is not a friend of the Vietnamese government.
“Nih was killed because he gave food and aid to the Montagnard refugees hidden in the jungle on the border between Vietnam and Cambodia to escape arrest and torture by the Vietnamese police and military forces.”
The MEPs called on the Commission to state whether it was aware of the atrocities being carried out and what it intended to do to ensure that those responsible for them were brought to trial and their victims immediately set free.