Vietnam: Military conscription evasion and legal consequences

The 2019 army recruitment season has started around the end of November 2018, and in this February 2019, localities will simultaneously hold a ceremony to hand over and receive troops, typically, young men from Dak Lak province will officially enlist in the army on February 20, 2019. Among them, there are also many people who find ways to avoid this obligation such as using money to fail the final medical examination or lying to falsify the results of the medical examination, etc. The reasons may be because their work is on the rise, because they want to complete a plan, a certain plan or simply because they do not want to leave the person they love, etc. However, they may not know that evading military conscription like that can cause them to receive corresponding fines, possibly even imprisonment.

Specifically, the levels of punishments for those who evade military conscription in 2019 are as follows:

* Administrative penalties of up to VND 05 million

- A warning shall be issued to male citizens reaching 17 years old in the year and required to register for conscription if they fail to apply for initial conscription registration.

- A fine ranging from VND 200.000 to VND 600.000 shall be imposed upon the following violations:

+ Failure to apply for initial registration for conscription, excluding the case provided above;

+ Failure to apply for supplemental conscription registration in case of change to name, address or workplace as per the law;

+ Failure to apply for modification of conscription registration prior to change of place of residence as per the law;

+ Failure to register for reserve force as per the law.

- A fine ranging from VND 500.000 to VND 1.000.000 shall be imposed upon failure to be present at the time or location for preliminary selection stated in the call to preliminary selection for conscription without a legitimate reason.

- A fine ranging from VND 800.000 to VND 1.200.000 shall be imposed upon failure to be present at the time or location for health examination stated in the call to health examination for conscription without a legitimate reason.

- A fine ranging from VND 1.500.000 to VND 2.500.000 shall be imposed upon failure to be present at the assembling time or location stated in the enlistment order without a legitimate reason.

In addition to fines, the remedial measure is enforced compliance with the enlistment order.

- A fine ranging from VND 2.000.000 to VND 4.000.000 shall be imposed upon the following violations:

+ Alteration of health classification results by persons undergoing health examination for the purpose of conscription evasion;

+ Offering of money or other material benefits to healthcare officials and workers for the purpose of falsification of health classification results of persons undergoing health examination for conscription;

- A fine ranging from VND 3.000.000 to VND 5.000.000 shall be imposed upon desertion during conscription in a regular armed force in peacetime which has not resulted in any serious consequence and for which the regiment-level military unit or equivalent has sent a notification of desertion and removal from personnel list to the commune-level People’s Committee and district-level military authority.

Legal bases: Articles 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 of Decree No. 120/2013/NĐ-CP of Vietnam’s Government.

* Criminal sanctions: Up to 05 years' imprisonment

Specifically, according to Article 332 of the Criminal Code 2015 of Vietnam, any person who fails to comply with regulations of law on conscription, defies an enlistment order or military training order despite the fact that he/she has incurred an administrative penalty or has an unspent conviction for the same offense shall face a penalty of up to 02 years' community sentence or 03 - 24 months' imprisonment.

In particular, this offense committed in any of the following circumstances carries a penalty of 01 - 05 years' imprisonment:

- The offender injures himself/herself to avoid conscription;

- The offense is committed in wartime;

- The offender drags another person into committing the offense.

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