Press Release

Press Release

Reporters Sans Frontières

February 28, 2001

For information contact:
33-1-42-21-59-59
asia@rsf.fr
www.rsf.fr

VIETNAM

The Enemies of the Internet
Obstacles to the free flow of information on the Internet (Report 2001)

Population: 79 million

Annual GDP per person: $1,689

Urban population: 19.6 %

Internet service providers: 6, all of them state run

Internet users: 100,000 (official number)

Economically promising but politically dangerous, the Vietnamese Internet has been developing since 1997 under the strict control of the Communist Party. In September 2000, the regime proposed a new, inexpensive access formula that would not require a license. Its only drawback is that access is limited to Vietnamese sites.

Internet users have to purchase a license to open an account with one of the six state-run ISPs (VDC, FPT, Saigon Postel, NetNam, SaiGonNet, and Vietel). Requests for licenses are examined by the access provider, the Post and Telecommunications administration, and the Ministry of Public Security. The Internet benefits mainly business people, expatriates, apparatchiks, tourists, and academics, and is used most for e-mail. Since April 2000, the universities have been required to provide free access to the nation’s 800,000 university students.

Politics and religion are taboo on the Internet. Almost 2000 sites deemed politically or morally "dangerous" are "manually" filtered by the Vietnam Data Corporation (the VDC, which depends on the Posts and Telecommunications administration). Relatives of leaders of the Communist party’s Central Committee run the nation’s ISPs. The director of Financing and Promoting Technology (FPT), Truong Gia Binh, is the son-in-law of general Giap, a hero of the war of independence. Recently, an expatriate Vietnamese investor was denied the right to participate in the Internet sector, a domain reserved for the elite.

Authorities target foreign news and human rights sites created by the large Vietnamese community overseas. Some Internet users circumvent these obstacles using sites such as anonymizer.com, which conceal the identity of the user visiting the site. Dissidents circulate written documents using pseudonyms and free e-mail accounts such as Yahoo! or Hotmail. In 2000, Bui Ngoc Tan’s forbidden book was published on-line from abroad.

Vietnamese dissidents are not permitted to connect to the Internet. Their telephone lines are disconnected. In January 2000, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that all on-line information must conform to the press laws so that it does not "put the Vietnamese government in danger». All information that might adversely affect the reputation of organizations or citizens is to be "banned from the Internet".

Reporters Sans Frontières defends jailed journalists and press freedom throughout the world, that is, the right to inform and be informed, in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Reporters Sans Frontières has nine branches (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland), representatives in Bangkok, Tokyo, Washington and Abidjan and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide.

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