For months, Mai Linh prayed.
She prayed for justice for her only son Quan when he was held ondrug charges in a maximum-security prison in Vietnam. She prayed for his physical health and mental well-being, that he would be looked after in prison because she could no longer see him due to heightened Covid-19 restrictions.
And most of all, she prayed for his safe return.
Quan, a salesman, was found guilty of drug trafficking and sentenced to death by lethal injection. He was executed in 2021 at the age of 31.
Strapped flat on his back in a straightjacket, he was tied to a gurney and injected with a cocktail of deadly drugs. But unlike in other countries such as the United States that use lethal injections in states like Texas, Mai Linh wasn’t permitted to be with her son during his final moments.
“There is nothing, nothing, that can prepare you for something like that,” Mai Linh said. “There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about how he died. The pain is unexplainable.”
“The death penalty is a different kind of evil,” she added. “One that will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Vietnam is famously secretive about its use of capital punishment. However, rights groups believe it to be one of the biggest executioners in the world and the biggest in Southeast Asia. Previously classified government data made public and publishedin Vietnamese state media outlets in 2017 revealed 429 executions had taken place between 2013 and 2016 – putting the country behind only China and Iran in its use of the death penalty.
A report released by Amnesty International this week found that global executions had risen by 20% as Covid-19 restrictions in countries eased. However, as in previous years, it did not include China and Vietnam where executions are regarded are state secrets. But Amnesty could confirm “partial disclosures” by Vietnamese authorities that indicated a rapid increase in the number of death sentences by nearly 30% – which were handed out between October 1, 2020 and July 31, 2021. It also said that 11 execution centers across the country had been “put to use” throughout the year.
The group now believes there to be more than 1,000 people on death row in the country – among them foreigners from Laos, Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia and a 73-year-old Australian woman convicted of drug trafficking.
The ruling Vietnamese Communist Party has long defended and justified its use of the death penalty. State documents released in 2017 showed approvals for lethal injections by the