Demand the Vietnamese Authority to review dead penalty for Nguyen Van Chuong

My name is Nguyen Truong Chinh, born in 1945, I am currently residing at Hamlet 1 Binh Dan Village, Kim Thanh, Hai Duong Province. My telephone number is 01626627673 (+84 1626627673). I am writing this letter in desperation, asking you for help by signing this petition to call on the Vietnamese Government to review my son's - Nguyen Van Chuong - case.

My son was wrongly accused of murder a police major in Dinh Vu District, Hai Phong City on July 14, 2007 at 21:00 hours. However, at the time the homicide occurred, my son Nguyen Van Chuong was at Hamlet 1 Binh Dan Village, Kim Thanh District, Hai Duong Province - our home village which was 40km away from the crime scene, visiting friends and relatives as he did every weekend. There many alibis and witnesses are willing to prove my son's where about at the time the homicide occurred.

Knowing his brother was innocent, my younger son, Nguyen Trong Doan, logged a petition to the police investigation office in Hai Duong city requesting the investigation office to look into his brother's case. Instead of carefully investigating the homicide, Hai Duong police arrested my younger son, tortured, coerced him to sign a fabricated indictment for a crime of so-called accessories to murder then sentenced him 2 years in prison.

In a heartfelt letter addressed to his mother, our son, Nguyen Van Chuong, had detailed how he was constantly tortured by the homicide police during the investigation. They used most inhumane, heinous, brutal methods to force him to confess the crime. When our son maintained his innocence, homicide police threatened him to beat his pregnant wife up and kill his unborn child if he refused to sign the confession. Could not endure the brutal, heinous tortures and in order to save his wife and his unborn child and to end his nightmare, our son had no choice but to sign the confession wrote up by police with their version of events, hoping that, when he was in-court he could present his case with the judge to prove his innocent. Unfortunately, in court, the judge and prosecutors did not accept factual evidences provided by witnesses and went ahead to sentence our innocent son to death penalty, regardless.

On 26/10/2014, Huynh Tien Nam, a deputy police commander from Binh Dan village police station together with two civilian clothes men went to our home to see us. One of the men was introduced as Nguyen Dang Linh and the other was introduced as Thanh, a police officer from Kim Thanh district, Hai Duong province. They informed us that the death penalty will be carried out on our son Nguyen Van Chuong at the end December 2014 and asked us if we had anything to say. We told them we strongly objected the death penalty imposed on our son and all we wanted was justice for our innocent son. In the last 8 years, we have continuously called on the authority, police, the court, crime investigation department, provincial and local governments to review our son's case but none of these offices were bothered to look into it.

In the last 8 years, my wife and I have been doing anything we possibly can in hope the court would review our son's case and retrial according the rule of law as we believe my son was innocent. We sold everything we owned from our productive land - our means of living to a piece of land in the back of our home as well as took loans to pay for defend lawyers as well as our trips to the local and central government offices, courts, the parliament house to get attention from the authority about my son's case. In the last eight years, we have sent thousands of the letters to the governments' offices, both provincial and central governments as well as the President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam requesting to intervene. Despite thousands of letters, petition were sent to the authority, none was responded from the government.

My wife and I have tried every humanly possible avenue in bid to save our innocent son from the death penalty. I again wrote a letter to the President of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, Truong Tan Sang, this time with my own blood. Like many letters I sent to him before, I have never received any response from our Head of State.

Early December 2014, we handed my petition about my son's case to Mrs Le Thi Nga, deputy director of Vietnam Congress' Justice Department, requested her to hand letter over to the president. However, until now I have not received any responded from the authority while the execution date is imminent. Nowhere to turn, my wife and I chose sitting and silent protest as a last resort at the front of Ly Thai To park in Hanoi to let people who believe in justice know that our son was unjustly sentenced to death for the crime he did not commit.

We strongly believed that our son is innocent. He did not commit any crimes and he does not deserve to die. We are do anything we humanly can to fight for justice and to DEMAND THE AUTHORITY TO OVERTURN NGUYEN VAN CHUONG'S DEATH PENALTY. We would like again to ask for your help by voicing your support and demand the Vietnamese Authority to immediately review our son's case and to carry out thorough investigation, bring the culprits to justice as well as petition the Vietnamese Government to review its juridical system to ensure a fair, transparent and independent juridical system for all Vietnamese people. If Nguyen Van Chuong was unjustly executed for the crime he did not commit then there will be many people will die unjustly like him

With Respect,
Nguyen Truong Chinh, December 2014