The Suspect’s Right to Silence in Viet Nam

Abstract

Viet Nam is attempting to develop a judicial reform strategy to uphold the rule of law and to protect the rights and interests of its people. However, the protection of the rights for criminal suspects in Viet Nam is still limited. In practice, there are still many legal constraints that limit the protection of a suspect’s rights in police custody.First, torture and other forms of ill treatment exist in the investigative phase and the court often condones these practices, regardless of whether the person charged has the constitutional right to both presumption of innocence and freedom from torture and other forms of ill-treatment. Second, the rules on police questioning of suspects and the taking of statements are vague and not respected carefully in reality. The absence of respect for these rights has several negative consequences for the suspect as it opens the way for torture and other forms of inhuman treatment to be used to extort confessions.So far, however, there has been little discussion about the right to silence for suspects in Viet Nam. Most studies on the rights of suspects have only been carried out in a small number of areas and limited to analysing the legal regulations protecting the general rights of the accused. No reliable study has been conducted on whether Viet Nam should guarantee the right to silence. Therefore, this article will explore the requirements needed to guarantee the right of the individual to protect himself or herself from self-incrimination in Viet Nam.