How do we record and check information?
The project collects accounts from people who have been detained in Vietnam and compares them with other sources of information. This page explains how we understand torture, how we check information, and how we protect the people who tell their stories.
How do we understand torture?
The person, the place of detention and the responsibility of those in chargeWe look at torture from three sides: what happens to the person detained, the conditions in the place of detention, and how the authorities responsible deal with those acts. This is the understanding the project uses to record and analyse accounts. It is not a legal definition. When this page uses the word “torture”, it does not mean that a court or any authority has reached that conclusion.
Torture is when a person is deliberately made to suffer pain, is threatened or is humiliated. They may also have control taken over when they eat, sleep or use the toilet, or have their sense of time, light, sound and space manipulated. The aim is usually to force a statement, a confession or the denunciation of others, to punish, to frighten, or to make the person change their thinking to suit the torturer.
The harm can be both physical and mental, and it can last long after the person is released. Each person lives through torture in their own way. The same treatment can leave very different effects and meanings for different people.
For each place of detention, we look at living conditions, how staff treat the people held there, and the acts that people describe in their accounts. When these together cause pain, fear or a loss of dignity for those held, we call it a torturing environment. We do not assume that every place of detention involves torture. Each place is described on the basis of the information gathered about that place. This is the central focus of the project.
As the project understands it, torture is carried out by people working for the state, or happens when they know about it and look away. So we look at the role of each party: those who carry it out, those who order or allow it, and those who know but look away. The authorities in charge are responsible for preventing torture and dealing with those who commit it. When those responsible face no consequences, fear can keep people in detention, and others, silent.
How we collect and check information
Three steps, one after anotherWe start from each person’s account. Next, we compare information about each place of detention. From there, we look at the problems shared across the detention system. Each step provides information for the next.
Accounts come from two sources: in-depth interviews and contributions from the community. Each interview lasts about 90 minutes and follows a detailed set of questions about detention and torture. The questions follow the stages of a criminal case: arrest, pre-trial detention and investigation, serving the sentence, and life after release. Asking in order of time helps people describe more clearly the places where they were held.
After the interview, the material is used in two ways. The first is the public account: we edit it into a first-person account and publish it in the “Accounts” section. We keep the words, meaning and voice of the person telling it. We remove only repetition and details that must be hidden to protect them.
The second is using the information in the account for analysis. We compare the details of one interview with other interviews and sources, to better understand each place of detention and the prison system in Vietnam. Each account is analysed with the Torturing Environment Scale (TES) developed by Pau Pérez-Sales (2017). This tool helps identify the elements of detention conditions and treatment that can cause pain, fear or harm to people held.
Contributions from the community vary in length and detail. We analyse them in the same way as interviews. An account with enough detail is published as a case of its own in the “Accounts” section. The information in it is also used for comparison with other sources.
To understand a place of detention, we compare information from several sources: in-depth interviews, community contributions, information from the state, published sources and satellite imagery. We look at where the sources agree and where they differ. This helps us present information more fairly, and shows things a single source rarely shows. The amount of information differs from place to place. Where there is enough, we describe the common forms of treatment and the relations between those held and the guards; where there is little, the description is limited.
Places of detention are marked on the map on the home page. Click a point on the map to see information about that place and open any related accounts. A summary for each place is being prepared. The information on each place will be updated as new accounts and sources come in.
At this step, we bring together accounts, information about places of detention, Vietnamese legal texts and published sources. The aim is to understand how the prison and criminal justice systems in Vietnam work. We look at the torture-related problems that can arise at each stage of a case, and at the role of the state in the fact that torture has not ended. This work is being prepared and will be published as a report once it is complete.
Checking information and protecting those who tell their stories
Three principlesWe cannot enter places of detention or see for ourselves what happens inside. So a single account may not be enough to confirm everything about an event. We keep looking for more accounts and other sources to compare. Many similar accounts help us understand a place better, but they do not mean every detail has been verified.
Each person feels and remembers in their own way, even when held in the same place and treated the same way. We keep the experience and meaning in each person’s account, and do not force different experiences into a single explanation. Editing is only to make an account easier to read and to protect the person telling it; it must not change what they meant.
Each person who tells their story is given a randomly chosen pseudonym in place of their real name. In anything published, we remove details that, put together, could identify them or people connected to them. For others mentioned in an account, we only consider using a real name when doing so puts them at no further risk. A person having died does not by itself mean their name can be made public.
We make our method public so readers understand where information comes from, how it is checked, and what to keep in mind when using or citing it.