21 February 2004 :

The European Union said it was considering a response to the decision by Vietnam's Government to stop releasing details about the use of the death penalty in the country. In a reply to a question from Irish Green MEP Patricia McKenna, the EU's Council of Ministers said the decision on the death penalty, "is a cause of concern", and added that it was considering recommendations for EU action.
"The Council follows the human rights situation, including the use of the death penalty, in Vietnam very carefully, and has repeatedly raised concerns in this context in its contacts with the Vietnamese Government, inter alia in the structured EU-Vietnam human rights dialogue at the level of EU missions in Hanoi", the Council letter said.
In 2003, at least 69 people were executed and 111 sentenced to death in the country. But in an apparent bid to curtail international criticism over Vietnam's use of the death penalty, Prime Minister Phan Van Khai signed an order in January stating that "reports and statistics" on the death penalty were "top secret". This broke the April 2003 United Nations Resolution on the use of the death penalty which called for "information with regard to the imposition of the death penalty and to any scheduled execution" to be made "available to the public". In Vietnam, even the relatives of those facing execution are not informed beforehand.
Human rights group Amnesty International has criticised the decision. "Hiding behind draconian decrees protecting so-called 'state secrets', the Vietnamese authorities are flouting international human rights standards and basic rights surrounding freedom of expression and freedom of access to information", the organisation said.