MOSCOW, September 16 (RIA Novosti) - Human Rights Watch (HRW) has declared that the Vietnamese police abuse people in custody, sometimes even leading to deaths, the organization said in a statement published on its website Tuesday.
“Police throughout Vietnam abuse people in their custody, in some cases leading to death,” the statement said. “The Vietnamese government should take immediate action to end suspicious deaths in custody and torture of detainees by police.”
In its “Public Insecurity: Deaths in Custody and Police Brutality in Vietnam” report, the organization touches upon cases of brutal abuse that brought deaths and injuries to detainees in 44 of Vietnam’s 58 provinces between August 2010 and July 2014.
“Police severely abused people in custody in every region of Vietnam,” the statement continued. “The Vietnam government has a human rights crisis on its hands and should investigate and start holding abusive police accountable.”
According to HRW, police held people in custody for minor offenses and vague suspicions, such as a minor dispute in a neighborhood. It cites the case of Nguyen Mau Thuan, who was beaten to death in Hanoi into three hours of arrest, and Le Phuc Hung, who suffered the same fate in Gia Lai on allegations of stealing water pipes. In justification, the police throughout the country said that those who were tortured to death took their lives themselves by hanging or other methods.
HRW also stated that the police often pinned the blame on doctors who were “too hard with their hands” during emergency treatment.
Some of the survivors told HRW that police beat them in order to extract confessions, even for crimes that they had not committed.
“In July 2013, Soc Trang province police beat and forced six men to confess to a murder,” the HRW statement said. “Others said they were beaten for criticizing police officers or trying to reason with them. Victims of beatings also included children and people with mental disabilities.”
According to HRW, the Vietnamese media has been "uneven" in that some selected cases were made public, whereas many others went unnoticed by the country’s media. HRW puts this down to the negative influence the government exercises on the country’s mass media.
“Vietnam should permit the media to do its job of investigating and reporting the news about official abuses,” HRW urged. "Independent journalism could help expose abuses that otherwise would be swept under the carpet.”
In its statement, the organization also stated that the lawyers of the accused were obstructed in carrying out their professional duties.
Through the statement, HRW hopes to have the government of Vietnam establish an independent commission that would deal with complaints filed against police officers, who often remain at large despite committing grave crimes, and review abuses reported.
