Why Vietnamese government tries to strictly control media rights?

Historically, after decolonization of France from Vietnam in 1954, Vietnam was divided into two along 17^th parallel (North and South Vietnam) according to Geneva peace accord. The North Vietnam was ruled by communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, while the South was ruled by king Bao Dai. In 1955, G. Ngo Dinh Diem which was backed by the U.S. overthrew the King Bao Dai and came to power as a president of the Republic of Vietnam.

The involvement of the U.S. in Vietnam led to the “Second Indochina War” which known as Vietnam War. Due to many factors such as the anti-war protests, long bloodiest war, and massive spending on military intervention, Nixon Administration sought the way to end the war and decided to withdraw its troops from Vietnam by negotiating with North Vietnam and signing Paris Peace Accord in 1973. In 1975, North Vietnam troops, which led by communist leader Ho Chi Minh, won over the South, and seized control Saigon.

Finally, North and South were officially unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in the following year. Since 1975, Vietnam became the authoritarian state. Since then, human rights abuses were quickly existed in Vietnamese society especially freedom of press, freedom of expression, and media.

Currently, the Internet accessibility in Vietnam has rapidly grown from day to day, and many Vietnamese people know how to access to the Internet by using social network and creating blogs. However, Vietnam has been accused of being an enemy of media freedom because of its notorious record of jailing dissident bloggers and blocking social networks.

Actually, the media right limitation has become the deeply concern among Vietnamese people since Vietnamese government passed a regulation, which was known as Decree 72, or the “Management, Provision, Use of Internet Services and Information Content Online”, signed by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on July 15, 2013.

In September 2013, this decree came into effect, and it has also been used to prevent Vietnamese people from exchanging their personal information, quoting, summarizing, sharing information from press organizations or government websites. 

In Vietnam, the Internet user has rapidly grown up to 35% of population while the smart phone users reached 17 million according to the Google (Reuters, 2013). Due to the rapid growth of the internet users, Vietnamese is fearful that it will threaten the public order and security since its people can access to the internet and use it to attack the government as well as create the uprising among Vietnamese people. Consequently, Vietnam, the authoritarian state, ruling by the communist party has started prohibiting its people’s Internet rights from accessing to the Internet or social network sites, exchanging, sharing or quoting information in the websites through enacting an Internet law. Thousands of internet websites have been blocked in Vietnam and the most famous social networks such as Facebook and Twitter were also prohibited and domestic and foreign Internet companies are required to monitor and store every data of the users, subject bloggers and online critic (World report, 2011).

However, Vietnam not only strictly controls the media and internet rights but also limits many fundamental rights of its people, and it has been known as the most severe violation of human rights country in Southeast Asia. Since 2010 dozens of Vietnamese writers, political activists, as well as peaceful critics have been harassed, arrested and jailed by the Vietnamese government. Besides tightening control over the freedom of expression, land eviction and confiscation of private properties of people has also become the most concerning issue in Vietnamese society. Inevitably, the restriction of the media and Internet rights of Vietnamese government by creating the cyber law to regulate every activity of the internet users has become controversial since the government claims that the new law will be used to combat the infringement of intellectual property rights; on the other hand, Vietnamese people and international organizations believe that the new law will violate people’s media rights and also be used to silence the online critics. There are two major reasons that forced Vietnamese government to restrict its people Internet and media rights, such as the fear of revolutionary movement and protection of the local telecom companies.

First of all, it’s related to the political reason. The Vietnamese government is inevitably fearful that the rights of media as well as internet will become the threat to the Vietnamese communist government. Those rights actually can create the unrest and uprising among Vietnamese people if the government doesn’t take action urgently. Regarding to the advanced technology, it is believed that Vietnamese people will easily use their rights to slam Vietnamese communist government’s sensitive policies as well as actions toward the people in the society. And sharing domestic or international information that related to Vietnamese government’s policies, posting status for condemning the government, calling for public riot or assembly, owning independent media outlets, and creating personal blogs are banned in Vietnam. It’s a very vital policy of the Vietnamese government for keeping its power and preventing any possible revolution that would happen someday unpredictably. Vietnamese government strongly believed and considered the media rights, particularly the use of internet and social media, as the threat to the national security, national unity as well as social order.  

Actually, Vietnamese government might learn much from the Arab spring that has just emerged in the Arab world in 2010.  It has studied about the political unrest in Arab and tried to create the policy to maintain the state’s stability. The Arab Spring originally began in the Middle East and swept across the North Africa, such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and many others by provoking the anti-government protests to force their leaders to step down from the power. Regarding to the advanced technology, those people have been able to use the social media as a tool to call for the mass protest, the occupy Wall Street, and revolution against the government. Additionally, they have also used the social networks as a tool to criticize the government’s sensitive actions, such as corruption, human rights violation as well as land confiscation. It can be seen social networks would emerge as a technology for spreading political dissents and cause the worse political upheaval in the region.

             Second, it is related to the economic reason. The new internet law; decree 72, also requires all internet and social network companies which are located in Vietnam to cooperate with the government and to host at least one server inside the country. Moreover, the new law also aims at controlling the free foreign internet base telecom tools such as Line, Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp which provide free text and call for the Vietnamese internet users. Regarding to the rapid growth of the internet users and social network players in Vietnam from time to time, it is believed that Vietnamese government should have a significant management framework for the communications services and to protect Vietnamese local telecom companies. 

         The most important thing that drew the Vietnamese government’s attention is the growth of the internet users that are using foreign social networks instead of using the local telecom companies. According to the Vietnamese representative of Viettel Telecom, Vietnam is to actually lose 40-50 percent of the total revenue if the government doesn’t take action and let its people use the foreign social networks or internet apps such as Line or Viber instead of using traditional text and call. Viettel is known as one of the biggest state-own telecom company which provides the internet, online call and text services to Vietnamese people. Since the foreign social networks companies are providing free text and call, it really becomes the harm to the local telecom companies, and it is not such a good competition. Thus, Vietnamese government needs to impose the internet law as the protectionist way to secure the local companies security and sustainability and also to protect the national interests.