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.
Check your knowledge of history. Revolutionary history is actually not uniquely bloody. Counter-revolutionary and/or status-quo violence has historically been just as, or even more, bloody (need I mention the countless massacres and genocides perpetrated by colonialists and imperialists? Or is it enough to mention France, Russia, China, and Cambodia to win every argument?)
That said, I am of course very very very averse to any kind of violence. The whole point of my comment is that it is a dirty, shameful thing that should never happen. The fact that it does happen is extremely unfortunate but ultimately is the fault of the status-quo boots pushing down people’s throats. There is always a non-bloody way out of an oppressive situation: stop the fucking oppressing. Lift the boot. Give up the privilege. Simple as.
Example: 1960s Quebec. The Catholic Church simply gives up its stranglehold on French-Canadian society. No anticlerical massacres follow. Everyone happy. That’s the model.