Summary
Vietnam’s High People’s Court upheld the death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, convicted of embezzlement and bribery in a record $12 billion fraud case.
Lan can avoid execution by returning $9 billion (three-quarters of the stolen funds), potentially reducing her sentence to life imprisonment.
Her crimes caused widespread economic harm, including a bank run and $24 billion in government intervention to stabilize the financial system.
Lan has admitted guilt but prosecutors deemed her actions unprecedentedly damaging. She retains limited legal recourse through retrial procedures.
My personal take on the death penalty is a bit more nuanced than most people’s, in that I support it for desk-perpetrators who commit crimes against international humanitarian law (crimes against humanity, starting a war of aggression, …) or dismantle/overthrow democracies. Desk perpetrator here means that the person cannot just participate in physical action but has to be a decision maker using institutional power. This should ideally be handed out by the ICC and no other court.
If I use this model, it tells me that the death penalty here is not justified: I’m not convinced that the bank she led had enough power to qualify as giving her sufficient institutional power to qualify and even if it did, theft and bribery are not crimes against humanity.
But yeah, I’m not going to cry if they go through with it anyways.
The main problem with any type of capital punishment is that it relies on an unbiased court system with reaching powers. The ICC has a pretty well established history of really only being able to prosecute criminals from impoverished nations.
If the ICC did execute war criminals, it would be an “international” court that almost exclusively executed people of color.
Obviously I believe that the rome statute needs to be signifiantly extended and the ICC should for starters receive flat out universal jurisdiction: A big reason for why so few western people have been charged at it (though: Netanjahu and Puttler are now on the list!) is that a lot of the stuff that could be charged at it happened between nations that were not members of the ICC, meaning that it lacked jurisdiction. Now obviously all the responsible government-members of the “coalition of the willing” should be charged for the crime of aggression, and it is extremely disappointing that they aren’t, but since then the fact of the matter is that most of the rich states that are members have reasonably functional criminal justice systems and largely refrained from severe enough crimes that they would fall under ICC-jurisdiction.
Also: Even today you can also turn it around and say that it first and foremost gives justice to victims of color. Which is arguably much more important than the skin-color distribution of the genocidal trash that the convict! On that note, it bears mentioning that there is no right to get away with crimes just because others do!
Right, but even when people like netanjahu are charged by the ICC, the wealthy European members states fail to enforce their convictions.
I think that’s kinda europe patting themselves on the back for “solving” an issue they often caused in the first place. I don’t think putting retired African war criminals on trial is very meaningful when that war criminal was empowered by European colonialism in the first place.
Eh… I think that’s highly reductive. If I made the same claims about about the systemic racism in American policing would you be defending the American justice system?
Would you interpret that the American justice system is giving justice to POC when they arrest POC because they are the most victimized segment of our society? That ignores the systemic nature of how the victimization occurred in the first place.
At the end of the day, it’s not really a justice system if certain segments of society are immune from penalties being applied to only the disadvantaged participants. At some point it’s just a tool utilized to negate the competition from practicing the same crimes that others have utilized to achieve their position on the global scale.
That has not happened yet. It may happen, but let’s not accuse them of things they haven’t done yet.
It was still them committing the war crimes. Let’s not pretend that Africans are somehow infantile children who are not responsible for their own actions. And the European involvement in those cases is usually also far more removed than that accussation makes it seem.
The sorry excuse for a justice system that the US has is for many reasons a whole different can of worms. To make it short: The issues with white people getting away with shit more often than black people (and I’m not convinced that that is as much a problem if we are talking about homicides, a handful of very high profile cases not withstanding the general trend) doesn’t mean that the solution is to let black people get away with first degree murder. The issue is that white people can get away with shit, not that black people can’t!
That is a completely different situation. A better analog would be if the federal police investigated murders happening in predominantly black communities more often than murders in predominantly white communities, pointing out that they are more common and that the local police forces seem to put more efforts into it in the later cases, making outside intervention less necessary. And yeah, if that was what was happening, it would indeed not be racist but completely justified.
The problem is that that is not what is happening in the US, but it is kinda what is happening within the countries that ratified the Rome statute.
They are not immune though: The justice system is fully prepared to treat them like everyone else, the problem is that sometimes it doesn’t have jurisdiction (when something happens between non-member countries) or where you have to be concerned about whether corrupt cops are willing to let the criminal go despite an arrest warrant.
Yes, a lot of the west can be very hypocritical and the US is often absolutely awful, but it is really important to still look at who is on the other side and not to get blinded by accusations of hypocrisy, which is really just another form of whataboutism that in this case is even more inappropriate than in most others.
Frances foreign minister has already claimed that he’s immune from prosecution…
Lol, great choice of language there… I would like to point out those are your words, not mine.
Also, weren’t you the one claiming that the “desk” perpetrators should be the ones executed. I guess that sentiment ends conveniently with the warlord and not the people who enable them?
I’m not claiming they don’t hold blame, I’m just saying that the governments whom caused the material conditions for a a warlord to rise to power hold that same responsibility. In a lot of cases these warlords are sponsored by Western nations trying to destabilize governments that politically align against them.
Weird, it’s almost like the ICC only prosecutes the crimes of people that oppose western geopolitical agenda. Curious.
I beg to differ. It’s a very similar asymmetrical hierarchical structure that allows people in power to enforce rules on people who don’t have power, for engaging in the same crimes as the people in power.
"Black people were six times more likely to be arrested for homicide in 2020 than white people. " “According to the FBI, 55.9% of homicide offenders were African-American, 41.1% were white, and 3% were of other races.”
Sure…not a big problem.
I never made that claim, I just said that it’s not really a justice system if one race is allowed to do crimes and other races are not.
Why? Because it’s damaging to your argument?
I think a better analog would be that the government came up with a an entire new justice system that only investigated crimes committed by black people… While local police continue ignoring the crimes committed by white people.
White savior moment…
Lol, sure. I’m sure the foreign minister of France is sticking their necks out for a genocider from Kenya…
Please, name one white person who the ICC has put in jail. Hell, name 1 white person who the ICC has prosecuted before 2020. At the end of the day the ICC is a political body of countries whom have geopolitical agenda, and are willing to turn a blind eye when it suits them.
My friend, I’m not saying that warlords shouldn’t be prosecuted. I’m just pointing out that the ICC is not a non biased judicial system, at least not to the point where id trust them with the ability to prescribe capital punishment.
Pointing out hypocrisy is not a whataboutism. I never once validated crimes of anyone’s crimes because other crimes occurred that were not policed. My original rebuttal still stands true, the ICC isn’t non biased enough to prescribe death warrants.
Which is disgusting, but we will see what happens when it actually happens and in any case the fault of France, not of the ICC.
What makes you think that? If you want to hear me say that Kissinger should have been sentenced to be burned at the stakes, I have zero reservations to give you that.
Please name reasonably recent examples, preferably ones where it is not the US doing it. You can talk about a lot of meddling, but it is really not a common thing of the current west supporting warlords against even remotely legit governments. And the goal is usually very much not destabilization, even if that may be the effect. When we are talking about criminal law, intention matters.
And the ICC is kinda doing the opposite. Really not comparable, as I said.
Fair, but again: I’m not super interested in the US, because we already know that it is a shithole country.
But that’s the thing:
That’s an unfair standard, considering that the ICC has so far sentenced 8 (EIGHT!) people from 2 (TWO) case-groups to prison, both of which concerned civil wars in Africa.
First of all excluding all the white people that they charged since then in three case groups (Georgia, Russia, Israel) is something that you would have justify.
And who should they have prosecuted? Blair obviously (and they did infect investigate it!), but other than that I don’t see many obvious candidates that are very clearly missing over whom the court has jursidiction. The thing is: Since the Iraq-war most European countries neither had large civil wars, nor did they really participate in other wars that were not UN-sanctioned.
The fact of the matter is that they are doing more in Africa simply because Africa has a lot of civil wars that involve a significant amount of particularly illegal forms of warfare such as child-soldiers. So yes, there are more war-crimes in unstable regions.
I guess that is why it went against most of those countries and prosecuted Netanjahu?
Like: It’s actually pretty clear at this point that they are acting increasingly as an independent and neutral instance.
But you can’t argue that based on what other countries are saying whom they are going to extradite. The ICC is independent, that’s the whole point!
Who should then prosecute those crimes that are otherwise not accessible to prosecution? The ICC only gets active if there is no serious attempt at prosecution in the country itself!
Like any international body, the ICC is only as legitimate as it’s member states willingness to participate.
“Let’s not pretend that Africans are somehow infantile children who are not responsible for their own actions.” Mainly that… But it’s kinda besides the point, as you aren’t responsible for who gets prosecuted by the ICC.
“NATO powers such as the United Kingdom and the United States support the Saudi Arabian–led intervention in Yemen primarily through arms sales and technical assistance.[396] France had also made recent military sales to Saudi Arabia”
“The tribunal requested a thorough investigation as some of the evidence indicated “possible acts of genocide”.[28] Its panel found Sri Lanka guilty of genocide at its 7–10 December 2013 hearings in Berman, Germany. It also found that the US and UK were guilty of complicity.”
" 2008 report by the Rwandan government-sponsored Mucyo Commission accused the French government of knowing of preparations for the genocide and helping to train Hutu militia members."
“Since the war began, both regional and international powers have been actively involved in the conflict. A number of reports have been made alleging that China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were all providing military support for the Ethiopian government via the sale of weaponized drones.”
“October 2023, political analyst Lena Obermaier argued that Germany is complicit in Israel’s war crimes against Gaza.[6”
"On 12 December 2023, Human Rights Watch said that selling weapons to Israel could make the UK complicit in war crimes. "
"In March, OXFAM released a statement detailing its intention, alongside several other NGOs,[p] to sue Denmark to prevent arms sales to Israel, warning that by selling arms Denmark is “complicit in violations of international humanitarian law … and a plausible genocide”.
Lol, the ICC isn’t run by economically advanced states? They haven’t primarily prosecuted people in poor states?
People in those rich states never participated in war crimes?
And how many POC were prosecuted vs white people?
Sure, western Europeans historically haven’t viewed serbs as “white”. We already talked about Israel.
Again, how many people have been prosecuted that are white?
Ahh yes, the UN is immune from unethical wars…
And why exactly does Africa have a lot of civil wars…? Hmmm…maybe the hundreds of years of western colonialism and interventionist actions on the continent might have something to do with it?
Only to have it’s own member states ignore the court they belong to?
So long as they don’t prosecute anyone from the G7… Sure.
Lol, I’ve said this several times. I don’t inherently think the ICC itself is evil or anything, I just don’t think they’re really effective at doing anything unless it fits within the geopolitical will of its wealthiest member states. The problem is systemic in nature, and no matter what anyone in the ICC believes no international body is truly independent.
Selling weapons to parties engaged in a conflict, to an extent even if they are used for warcrimes is not among the list of crimes that the ICC has jurisdiction for. You can argue that it should be on the list and I’d be inclined to agree with you, but the entire point of a court like this is that it REALLY has to do things by the book to maintain its acceptance.
Not really, it’s actually quite diverse!
Define white… They are prosecuting 6 Russians, 3 Israelis, 3 Georgians, 3 Palestinians and 1 person from Myanmar of 65 people total, the remainder being from a variety of African countries.
Okay, you can of course say that no one prosecuted is white, by setting the standards for being white arbitrarily high. If you demand someone whose ancestors for the last 10 generations have lived in a Norwegian Fjord, then yes, none of them are white. Let me guess, you are from the US? Because this really isn’t a European perspective, the entire distinction between white and non-white matters a lot less here. And not even because there is necessarily less racism, but because the racism that is around isn’t really about whiteness.
Not necessarily, but it has done reasonably well with regards to what it sanctioned and is the relevant body who decides on the legality of wars. Which is what matters here, not whether or not you or me agree with every individual decision.
Yes, but most of those colonialists are no longer available to be judged and since the events predate the Rome statute wouldn’t be accessible to it anyways. History can explain things, but it doesn’t justify or excuse things. At the end of the day, there are more warcrimes in Africa than in Europe, East-Asia and the Americas today.
So far they haven’t and there have also definitely be some that made it clear that they will comply with the rules, as well as some that tried to avoid giving clear statements.
They don’t have jurisdiction for the US and for the other 6 there is no clear precedent. I would expect most of them to comply, though it is unlikely to come up because most of them would likely prosecute their criminals themselves if it reached the point where the ICC would look.
But that is no longer an argument about whether it would deserve the right to execute people.
It has definitely started to show some attitude with Israel. that’s more than most other institutions can say of themselves.