Numbers in jail revealed as 20,000 look set for amnesty
HANOI - Vietnam has more than 70,000 convicts in its prison
system, it was reported yesterday. The number of
prisoners has until now been considered a state secret
by the country's communist rulers.
A meeting of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS)
concluded as many as 20,000 prisoners, or more than
28 per cent of the total, may be eligible for amnesty this
year, a newspaper report said.
They will be released to coincide with the 25th
anniversary of the liberation of Saigon and the end of the
Vietnam War on April 30, and Vietnam's National Day
on September 2.
"Our greatest concern now after this grand amnesty . . .
[is that] there are still 50,000 other prisoners who
remain in detention or in prisons," the newspaper quoted
Do Nam, the director of MPS Department for
management of prisons and re-education camps, as
telling the meeting.
Hanoi recently rejected the notion that the main purpose
of the amnesty was to ease massive overcrowding in the
country's jails.
"We give the amnesty out of the humanitarian nature of
the party and state and the nation and not under any
pressure," MPS Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Tinh
said.
The official figure of 70,000 prisoners does not include
people that authorities have placed in administrative
detention or under house arrest, a number that sources
have described as "significant".
Deutsche Presse Agentur - March 8, 2000.
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