Vietnam’s president dies at 61
Country’s leader was treated for a rare virus
HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, the country’s No. 2 after the ruling Communist Party’s leader, died Friday after a serious illness, the government said. He was 61.
Quang passed away despite “utmost efforts to treat him by Vietnamese and foreign professors and doctors and care by the party and state leaders,” the statement said. It said Quang died at a military hospital in Hanoi but did not elaborate on his illness.
The state-run online newspaper VnExpress quoted a former health minister and the head of a national committee in charge of leaders’ health, Nguyen Quoc Trieu, as saying that Quang had contracted a rare and toxic virus since July last year and had traveled to Japan six times for treatment. He did not specify the virus.
Phil Roberston, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said that Quang would be remembered for “a multiyear crackdown on human rights and putting more political prisoners behind bars in Vietnam than any time in recent memory.”
Some 97 activists have been jailed as of April this year, according to Amnesty International.
Quang’s last public appearance was at a Politburo meeting of the ruling Communist Party and a reception for a Chinese delegation on Wednesday. He looked frail on the state-run Vietnam Television broadcast.
Born in northern Ninh Binh province, Quang attended a police college and rose through the ranks at the powerful Ministry of Public Security before being appointed minister in 2011.
A career security officer and four-star general, Quang was elected president in April 2016 by the Communist Party-dominated National Assembly, effectively becoming the second most powerful man in the country after General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.
Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.