Internet censorship in Vietnam
Encyclopedia
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
extensively regulates Internet access to its citizens, using both legal and technical means. The collaborative project OpenNet Initiative
OpenNet Initiative
The OpenNet Initiative is a joint project whose goal is to monitor and report on internet filtering and surveillance practices by nations. The project employs a number of technical means, as well as an international network of investigators, to determine the extent and nature of government-run...
classifies Vietnam's level of online political censorship to be "pervasive" while Reporters without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
considers Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
one of 15 "internet enemies". While the government of Vietnam claims to safeguard the country against obscene or sexually-explicit content through its blocking efforts, much of the filtered sites contain politically or religiously sensitive materials that might undermine the Communist Party
Communist Party of Vietnam
The Communist Party of Vietnam , formally established in 1930, is the governing party of the nation of Vietnam. It is today the only legal political party in that country. Describing itself as Marxist-Leninist, the CPV is the directing component of a broader group of organizations known as the...
's hold on power. Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
reported many instances of Internet activists being arrested for their online activities.
Censored content
Censorship can usually be bypassed by using either The Onion Router or Google's "Cached" feature.Subversive content
The majority of blocked websites are specific to Vietnam: those written in Vietnamese or dealing with issues related to Vietnam. Sites not specifically related to Vietnam or only written in English are rarely blocked. For example, the Vietnamese language version of the website for Radio Free Asia
Radio Free Asia
Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation that operates a radio station and Internet news service. RFA was founded by an act of the US Congress and is operated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors . The RFA is supported in part by grants from the federal government of the United States...
was blocked by both tested ISPs while the English-language version was only blocked by one. While only the website for the human rights organization Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
was blocked in the tested list of global human rights sites, many Vietnamese-language sites only tangentally or indirectly critical of the government were blocked as well as sites strongly critical of the government.
Social networking
The popular social networking website FacebookFacebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
has about 1 million users in Vietnam and its user base has been growing quickly after the website added a Vietnamese-language interface. During the week of November 16, 2009, Vietnamese Facebook users reported being unable to access the website. Access had been intermittent in the previous weeks and there were reports of technicians ordered by the government to block access to Facebook.
A supposedly official decree dated August 27, 2009 was earlier leaked on the Internet, but its authenticity has not been confirmed. The Vietnamese government denied deliberately blocking access to Facebook and the Internet service provider FPT
FPT Group
FPT is a multinational information technology company of Vietnam, originally known as Food Processing Technology. One of Vietnam's leading companies, it is based in Hà Nội and has branches in Ho Chi Minh and Da Nang...
said that it is working with foreign companies to solve a fault blocking to Facebook's servers in the United States.
Blogging
In Vietnam, Yahoo! 360°Yahoo! 360°
Yahoo! 360° was a social networking and personal communication portal operated by Yahoo! made available in 2005. It enabled users to create personal web sites, share photos from Yahoo! Photos, maintain blogs and lists, create and share a public profile and see which friends are currently online...
is a popular blogging service. After the government crackdown on journalists reporting on corruption in mid-2008, many blogs covered the events, often criticizing the government action. In response, the Ministry of Information proposed new rules that would restrict blogs to personal matters.
Global Voices Advocacy maintains a list of bloggers who have been arrested for their views expressed online.
External links
- Internet Filtering in Vietnam in 2005-2006: A Country Study - study by the OpenNet InitiativeOpenNet InitiativeThe OpenNet Initiative is a joint project whose goal is to monitor and report on internet filtering and surveillance practices by nations. The project employs a number of technical means, as well as an international network of investigators, to determine the extent and nature of government-run...