In chapter four of the book The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990 by Marilyn B. Young, Young states that the french used
"denunciation, encirclement of villages, searches and raids, arrests of suspects, plundering, interrogations enlivened sometimes by torture (even of innocent people), deportation, and 'regrouping' of populations suspected of intelligence with the rebels, etc."
In May of 1959, Ngo Dinh Diem created the law 10/59. This stated that
"anyone charged with the crime of committing or attempting to commit acts against the security of the state would be arrested, tried by military tribunal, and executed within three days. There was no process of appeal. Nor could there be any doubt as to how the law would be applied... [It] reserved to the government the right to determine 'who is a Resistance member and a patriot, who is a Vietcong saboteur" (Young, p.62)
Even if a vietnamese mother of small children was innocent, she could and would be brutally tortured, and in the end... murdered. If tortured to a certain point, anybody would confess to anything. They would use water torture, which truthfully becomes unbareable. All in all, I believe that torture is horrible, and that anyone who uses it just to incriminate someone due to prejudice is simply evil.
