Vietnamese Police Say Prisoner Died After a Fall, Revising Earlier Suicide Declare — Radio Free Asia

Police in Vietnam mentioned Thursday mentioned {that a} prisoner who died of their custody final month had been severely injured after he fell, contradicting their earlier declare that he had dedicated suicide.

State-run VNExpress reported Thursday that on Jan. 6, 23-year-old Duong Quoc Minh, detained since Nov. 6 on costs of disrupting public order, fell and hit his head whereas resisting jail escorts on the Chi Hoa detention camp in Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, based on a consultant of the camp.

Nevertheless, in a Jan. 16 report printed by native outlet Tuoi Tre, Duong’s mom Trieu Ngoc Binh mentioned she acquired discover from the police on Jan. 6 that mentioned her son had taken his personal life and requested that she come to obtain his physique.

Upon retrieval from the town’s forensic heart, Trieu mentioned she discovered many bruises on Duong’s physique, so she petitioned the town’s supreme folks’s procuracy, the folks’s procuracy, and the director of the police to research her son’s dying.

Dang Dinh Manh, a Ho Chi Minh Metropolis lawyer, instructed RFA Thursday that acknowledged causes of dying inconsistent with obvious accidents are widespread in prisoner deaths.

“Usually studies of offenders’ deaths in detention camps have issues when held as much as forensic examinations. By means of the forensic examination, many issues associated to the dying may be discovered,” he mentioned.

“I don’t know something about this explicit case, however it’s essential to ask the police to offer a forensic report. From that report we might be capable of know the reason for dying,” mentioned Dang.

A 2014 report by New York-based Human Rights Watch mentioned that accidents and deaths in custody because of torture and police abuse are widespread in Vietnam.

“In some circumstances, police denied ever detaining topics who later died of their custody or supplied causes of dying in custody that pressure credulity together with dozens of alleged suicides by hanging and electrocution,” the report mentioned.

“In lots of different circumstances, solely a imprecise and unconvincing clarification was given for a dying in custody, even in circumstances the place the police felt compelled to tell media,” it mentioned.

RFA reported in December 2019 that Dao Quang Thuc, a retired trainer serving a 13-year sentence for his Fb posts, died in what jail authorities known as a stroke, solely a few 12 months after his time period began.

The jail refused to launch his physique to his household for burial, telling them to conduct the funeral within the jail on the identical day he died. The household was additionally pressured to permit the jail to carry out his post-mortem.

Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Huy Le. Written in English by Eugene Whong.