Whoever said that is full of shit. The right to silence was born out of the religious persecution that was rife in Europe in the 16th and 17th century, where coerce confessions and forcing people to incriminate themselves, even if it was bullshit, was commonplace. Also religion played a role. Lying in some circumstances was a mortal sin, but at the same time people acknowledged that people would naturally lie in order to protect themselves. So in order to make it possible for people to not commit mortal sins and not lie to authorities, the simple right to not answer questions and not have their silence used against them was eventually mandated.

If people did not have the right to silence, all the authorities have to do is just coerce a confession out of a suspect and not investigate anything else. This happens all the time in China and Japan. Japan technically does have the right to silence in their constitution, but in practice it does not exist. If you refuse to answer questions and clam up during interrogations, they will take it as an admission of guilt and as far as I know, no judge refused that.

In China you are required to answer any 'relevant' question posed by police, you only have the right to deny irrelevant questions. So basically if they accuse you of robbing and murdering some shopkeeper, you have to give an account of yourself, but if they ask you what you had for lunch today, you can decline to answer that question. Stupid, but it is what it is.