Vietnamese Government Tightens Control on Bloggers

Vietnam: The government has tightened controls on bloggers by introducing a new law to regulate the activities on forums and blogosphere, according to a local report.

Earlier this month, the communist authority said that they are planning to introduce new measures which can regulate more closely the online forums and blogosphere where people are exchanging ideas and opinions.

While the Internet medium has been regarded by international communities to be one of the few media where freedom of expression is continuously flourishing, this may not be the case in the country’s communist society.

The new law will regulate the online activities of “bloggers who are opposing the state, revealing military or economic secrets, or writing entries which may incite sedition, cause conflicts, and undermine the national security”.

According to local newspaper Thanh Nien, the government will try to make an agreement with Internet giants Yahoo and Google to make sure that the new law will be fully implemented resulting to a “healthy environment for bloggers.”

The authority’s plan is to seek the cooperation of online service providers which can help them to build a database on blogs which can be subjected to a strict supervision.  This proposed database will also allow authority to eliminate contents which violate the regulation.

Reporters Without Boarders, which is an international media watchdog based in Paris, listed Vietnam among countries which practice censorship and provide strict control over the electronic media, calling these as “enemies of the Internet”.

The media watchdog also compared the country to “its Chinese big sister” where the government has jailed numerous people who used the Internet to express their political opinions and beliefs.

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