By Ariel Bogle
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A policeman tries to stop a foreign journalist from taking
pictures outside the 2011 trial of Pham Minh Hoang, a French-Vietnamese
lecturer and blogger. Photo by IAN TIMBERLAKE/AFP/Getty Images
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To say Vietnam has a troubled relationship with the Internet would be an understatement. Despite government efforts to repress it, social media, especially Facebook, is immensely popular in Vietnam, with an estimated 70 percent penetration of the total Internet-using population. (About one-third of Vietnam's 90 million people are online.) Like many countries, Vietnam is apparently trying to incubate its own Silicon Valley, and there are homegrown social media sites like Zing Me and HaiVL.
But authorities have so far been unable to replicate China’s
Great Firewall to block content unfriendly to the regime, and have been
cracking down on online dissidence the old fashioned way—harassment and
arrests. In other words, “shoot the messenger,” according to Phil Robertson,
deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. It’s estimated that Vietnam has
imprisoned 46 bloggers and activists so far this year, second only to China,
and it’s ranked 172nd out of 179 countries in the Reporters Without Borders
Press Freedom Index.
The regime’s desire for strict control of online information
flares regularly. In October, on the same day that a Vietnamese man was
convicted for Facebook posts that called for the release of his brother,
another activist took to Facebook to broadcast news of his detention by police.
Dinh Nhat Uy’s campaign for the release of his brother, a
jailed activist, resulted in a 15-month suspended sentence for four Facebook
posts in which he was "abusing democratic freedoms", according to
Reporters Without Borders.
Meanwhile, friends of pro-democracy blogger Nguyen Lan Thang
posted a video on Facebook after he was detained at Hanoi airport, in which he
stated "When you see this video, it's certain that I have been arrested by
security forces." Earlier this year, American officials made their displeasure
known when a US-trained human rights lawyer and popular blogger, Le Quoc Quan,
was sentenced to a 30 months in jail, on tax charges believed to be politically
motivated.
Perhaps most astoundingly, in an effort to protect the power
of state-run media and crack down on the sharing of controversial views,
Vietnam has passed a decree banning the sharing of news online. The law, which
came into effect in September, makes it illegal for social media users to post
information gathered from almost all news sources in the name of “national
security” and preventing copyright infringement.
The broadly written legislation states, "Personal
electronic sites are only allowed to put news owned by that person, and are not
allowed to ‘quote’, ‘gather’ or summarise information from press organisations
or government websites," according to Hoang Vinh Bao, head of the
Department of Radio, TV and Electronic Information. It’s also illegal to
provide on social media "information that is against Vietnam, undermining
national security, social order and national unity ... or information
distorting, slandering and defaming the prestige of organisations, honour and
dignity of individuals."
For the average American, whose Facebook feed is stuffed
with angry uncles posting Fox News videos about Obamacare, the possibility of
being arrested for sharing news clips would be shocking. It also doesn’t bode
well for Vietnam’s Silicon Valley attempt. But as more and more Vietnamese go
online, the ability of the government to ensure that its citizens find only
“correct and clean information on the internet” cannot be long for this world.
Ariel Bogle is a researcher for Future Tense.
1 comment:
VC attitude will never change. They are very good at lying, cheating and manipulation. That is why their people continue to escape from such a regime. Majority advertised themselves into marrying foreigners from all over the world. They simply don't want to be part of the communists themselves, why? beacuse they are being controlled by immoral people, they rule to steal, rob and kill. They would apply with the same evil rule and tactic toward their neighour countries like Laos, Champa, Khmer Krom and to the whole khmer nation.
Soon, they will kill Ah Hun dynasty and take it all like always. Their evil tactics will continue on and on until the whole Southeast Asia belong to them. Their plan is to be big and better all the times, why? they believe in order to take over China, they have to big and strong and now, they tried to be close to the US in order to execute the China for their own benefit, after that, they will get rid of the US too, why? because 'they (VC) are expansionists and they are like crocodiles' Kingta.
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