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Coerced on Camera: Televised Confessions in Vietnam 1 Coerced on Camera Televised confessions in Vietnam © 2020 Safeguard Defenders Published in the United States by Safeguard Defenders All rights reserved. This report may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without expressed written consent of the publisher/author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews First edition. Keywords: Vietnam, Human Rights, Criminal Justice, Media, International law. This report is also available in Vietnamese starting March 11 (2020). https://SafeguardDefenders.com introduction 4 vietnam’s human rights record 6 the broadcasts 8 confessions in numbers 10 forced confessions, media and the law 11 criminal law and the right to counsel, fair trial, and protection against torture and self-incrimination 11 law on media, right to privacy and journalists’ obligations 12 media channels 13 international law and basic legal protections 13 international judicial standards 14 protection against torture 14 a look at wikileaks and the 2007 confessions 16 the visuals 17 vietnam’s tv confessions 17 comparison with china 17 the dong tam confessions 19 what’s in the confessions? 23 why do people agree to confess? 26 the manuscripts 27 costumes and makeup 28 shooting the videos 28 consequences for the victims 30 why they broadcast confessions 30 william nguyen 33 conclusions 36 appendix i: methodology 37 appendix ii: confessions 38 introduction On a summer’s day in 2017 in broad daylight, a caught on camera committing brutal multiple Vietnamese middle-aged man was kidnapped in a murders of family members. Berlin park by armed men and pushed into a dark car.1 Days later, he appeared on Vietnam’s national While the clips are in general less sophisticated state broadcaster confessing to wrongdoings in content and in production value than China’s, and claiming he had returned voluntarily to hand the subjects’ confessions bear many similarities. himself in. The man was Trinh Xuan Thanh, a They apologise, plead for mercy, warn others former executive of a state-owned oil enterprise against copying their “mistakes” and confess to who had applied for asylum in Germany but was committing anti-Vietnam crimes. Two even thank wanted on corruption charges in his native country. the state for showing them the error of their ways. However, unlike those in China, many of the Just a year later, Vietnam hit world headlines again human rights defenders give detailed explanations with images of an American graduate student, of the kinds of activities they were engaged in, William Nguyen, being dragged through the street including the names of pro-democracy groups by police as he took part in a protest against a and efforts to defend rights on the ground. Later proposed law on special economic zones in Ho Chi confessions appear to indicate that Vietnam is Minh City. A week or so later, he too appeared on learning some of China’s techniques, with its use TV to apologise and confess.2 of a forced confession to refute criticism from Germany that it had kidnapped Trinh Xuan Thanh These shocking events seemed to suggest that and William Nguyen’s broadcast, the first time Vietnam, long overshadowed by bigger, wealthier it had aired a foreigner’s forced confession on and more assertive China, had been learning some of its neighbour’s tricks. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a one-party Interviews with three victims state that has an appalling human rights record3, especially concerning the treatment of prisoners, show that as in China, suspects, and the rule of law, despite being a state Vietnamese police conceal party to the International Covenant on Political & the fact that footage will be Civil Rights and UN Convention Against Torture and domestic laws prohibiting forced confessions. aired on television Vietnam is also known to broadcast forced confessions on television, but until recently they have been fairly low key and so have received little television. Something that Scripted and Staged media attention. proposed was, in China’s case, a way to manipulate confessions as a foreign policy tool. Just before Following the publication of Safeguard Defenders’ this report was being finalised in early January Scripted and Staged: Behind the Scenes of China’s 2020, another confession video appeared on state Forced Televised Confessions in 2018, the first broadcaster VTV showing four suspects confessing in-depth study of China’s practice of airing forced in a now notorious case about a standoff between confessions of detainees before trial on national villagers and police over appropriated land television, we turned our attention to Vietnam. The on Dong Tam Commune, just south of Hanoi4. purpose of this study was to document the scope This broadcast was unusual in that it featured of Vietnam’s forced televised confessions, what multiple confessors and included statements that kind of confessions were aired and how did they implicated others in the “crime;” the first in this compare to those made in China. study to do so. Despite its relatively small sample size, this report Interviews with three victims show that as in has documented a variety of suspects who had China, Vietnamese police conceal the fact that their confessions broadcast on television or online footage will be aired on television. While none in Vietnam from human rights defenders including of the interviewees said they had been tortured lawyers, activists, citizen journalists, villagers or threatened, they said that they accepted protecting their land and a community pastor from being filmed because they were led to believe an ethnic minority to cases that involve a former they would be treated more leniently. Secondary party official accused of corruption and a farmer sources indicate that sometimes violence is used Coerced on Camera: Televised Confessions in Vietnam 4 to extract filmed confessions. All subjects were filmed before they had been found guilty in a court of law. In airing detainees’ forced confessions, police and media are breaking Vietnam’s own Criminal Code. And evidence that it may be following China’s lead by using forced TV confessions as a foreign policy tool is a worrying development. The purpose of Coerced on Camera: Televised Confessions in Vietnam is to bring much needed attention to this trend and to call on Hanoi to immediately stop this illegal and rights abusing practice. Coerced on Camera: Televised Confessions in Vietnam 5 vietnam’s human rights record The most recent reports on Vietnam by major and no public oversight” and sometimes act “with rights organizations describe its human rights impunity”.9 environment as deteriorating. Human rights defenders are harassed, detained and imprisoned; Arbitrary detention is widely practiced in Vietnam. freedoms of expression and association are strictly Pre-trial detention can be for up to two years, curtailed; there is no independent media; any and if national security arguments are invoked, voice that is deemed critical is silenced; and state- bail is denied and detention can be 28 months sanctioned violence is employed at will. (extendable). Essentially, national security crimes allow detention without trial until the As the country has evolved into an “ally” of the “investigation finishes”.10 In some cases, detention West, with promises of economic opportunity is similar to China’s custodial system called and its potential role as a partner against a rising Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location. China and its ambitions in the South China Sea, The victim is kept incommunicado, subjected to governments have been much less likely to speak solitary confinement with no lawyer or family visits out about Vietnam’s human rights abuses, allowing allowed.11 Hanoi free rein to crack down on dissidents5. Meanwhile Beijing’s increasingly repressive By law, police must allow all detainees access measures against its own people are serving as an to a lawyer, but often “bureaucratic delays” are attractive model for Vietnam’s one Party state to used to block access for weeks and months; emulate. sometimes an inmate may not be able to consult legal counsel until “immediately before the case” After the US withdrew from a multinational trade goes to trial.”12 It is certainly very unlikely any of pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017, a body the subjects in this study had access to a lawyer to that would have focused attention on Vietnam’s discuss making a recorded confession. human rights performance in order for it to remain a member, Hanoi “engaged in a renewed Enforced disappearances are also common, with crackdown against rights activism, arresting dozens police routinely denying that they have detained of bloggers and activists and sentencing many to the victim during the early stages. This can last long prison terms.”6 several weeks and even up to a year. Under such conditions, torture and coerced confessions are In 2017, the National Assembly revised the penal widely reported and occur with impunity. 13 code to widen the scope for committing national security crimes, and to punish lawyers if they Systematic torture has been reported at all stages do not report their clients to the authorities.7 of detention, with the most intense period pre-trial These revisions were then used to crack down on detention. Research indicates the main purpose is 14 activists, including several featured in this report for extracting confessions. such as citizen journalist Nguyen Van Hoa and A wide variety of torture methods has been activist blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh (more recorded including: beatings, water submersion/ commonly known as Mother Mushroom). near drowning, electric batons, forced medication In addition to national security laws, human through injection and pills, light deprivation, rights defenders are routinely charged with one sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, burning, of several “typical” crimes including: “carrying suspension by hands, shackled for extended out activities that aim to overthrow the people’s periods, and other stress positions.
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