Why,
Vietnam?
In
early 2011, a Western fiction-writer asked me, “Why are
Vietnamese bloggers so silent? From what I have witnessed, I found
that the Vietnamese government is as repressive as is the government
in Iraq, Iran, or Myanmar… but the world appears blind to that. The
world only knows about the dictatorial regime in Myanmar, while
Vietnam is known as a model of dynamic economic growth. They learn
about that from bloggers in Iran and Iraq, and from the leading
opposite Burmese magazine Irrawaddy. They know nothing about how
repressive the Vietnamese government is and how much its people are
suffering. Why? Is it because Vietnamese bloggers just talk to
themselves?”
Such
was an embarrassing question that I had never thought of before. Nor
did I know anything about the dissident Irrawaddy in Burma.
Nonetheless I heard about Burma as an oppressive authoritarian state.
I was not alone in thinking so: Many people in the world must have
thought the same about Myanmar, while very few knew there was another
Vietnam – the real Vietnam bearing such rhetorical praises as “the
economy is dynamic, women are beautiful, foods are good, and people
are friendly and hospitable.”
I
told the writer that although there were some prominent political
bloggers in Vietnam, they were known only within their community, or
the community of those concerned about politics. Such community was
very small and its members tended to isolate themselves, which was
why even the people inside the country knew little about them, not to
mention the outside world.
The
writer disagreed. He said in every country, those concerned about
politics only account for a small proportion. The more authoritarian
a government is, the more its people are discouraged from
participation; they are told to live “in peace and harmony” and
to care of themselves rather than of a wider community.
I
gave another answer, that the world's little knowledge of Vietnam may
originate from the fact that Vietnamese bloggers did not blog in
English and, more importantly, there was not any media to bring their
voices to the world. My answer seemed to be most relevant given the
limited time frame of just a sidewalk cafe talk, so we both agreed to
that explanation.
One of the first efforts to internalize Vietnam's human rights issues.
Courtesy of Anh Chi's Facebook page.
“I
write these lines for my fellow citizens”
Ten
days later, the Arabian Spring spread to Egypt when over 50,000
people joined a protest rally in Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011.
The protests lasted for 18 continuous days. On January 31, Al Jazeera
correspondents reported that the demonstrations had grown to at least
250,000 people (1). And these protests stemmed from calls on some
activists' Facebook pages.
Profoundly
inspired by the North African Revolution 2.0 it seems, Vietnamese
political bloggers began to use the Internet to share information and
create networks. On June 5, 2011, the first anti-China protests since
2007 took place in both Hanoi and Saigon, marking the bloggers' first
efforts to connect offline.
Almost
one year later, in April 2012, bloggers became the early pioneers in
reporting on the notorious land eviction in Van Giang district, near
Hanoi. Thus a great step forward had been taken since the “summer
of protests” in 2011 until this media campaign by the alternative
media in Vietnam. Now bloggers did not just wait for the mainstream
media to report news before they cited those news stories, adding
some cynical comments. They went further by:
-
writing commentaries and analyses, even finding supplementary facts.
Despite the emotional style which may sometimes reveal their
non-professionalism, they filled the vacuum left by the mainstream
media which in most cases would only report news without producing
any in-depth analysis;
-
conducting interviews with alleged victims of human rights
violations, whom the mainstream media may sometimes feel reluctant to
meet, either for fear of “sensitive elements” or because they
wanted to keep “neutral”.
Jessica
Ryan, an independent journalist from Oslo, told me once that she was
surprised by the way the Vietnamese journalists kept neutral, “If
they work for state-owned media and want to stay objective, they
should write about the people as opposed to the government. Give the people a voice. That, I think, is impartiality and neutrality.”
Though
much progress has been made, alternative media in Vietnam still aims
mostly at the Vietnamese audience. In other words, bloggers still
“talk to themselves” or “write for their fellow citizens”
only. News stories in English, if any, came as a result of the
accidental attention by some foreign reporter about Vietnam's human
rights situation via his/ her individual contact network.
Soldiers and police were deployed to implement the Van Giang land eviction on April 24, 2012.
Photo by an anonymous blogger.
International
attention – is it worth?
Some
said it was useless that the world knows what is happening in
Vietnam, especially human rights violations in the country, because
even if the story is told, the international community will hardly do
anything. After all, Vietnam's issues must be resolved by the
Vietnamese people who live inside their country. This is also true to
the democratization movement in Vietnam.
Yes,
it is true, after all, that things in Vietnam must be done by the
Vietnamese. The Vietnamese are the owner of their life.
But
we need to always look for the best. In the era of globalization,
being open to the world is better than closed. The bloggers' struggle
for freedom rights will certainly gain better results if it catches
the attention of the international community. Most significantly, the
Vietnamese government, with its long-established tradition of being
“oppressive at home, humble outside”, tends to flinch from
outside pressures rather than domestic ones. Ismail Wolf, Executive
Director of the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, said, “It's
easier for a neighboring government to raise the issue of human
rights to the Vietnamese government than the Vietnamese people do.”
While communist governments dislike transparency and openness, they
all like appreciation.
Asked
if the Vietnamese government was afraid of international public, a
senior official at the UNHRC, who requested to remain anonymous,
replied, “I would say “interested”, not “afraid”. They
may not be afraid, but they are interested to know what the world
thinks about them. They care about governments in countries where
there are public opinion influencing media. For this reason, I am
confident that international media is very important... Regarding
human rights violations in Vietnam, I believe that if such stories
get in the international news, the Vietnamese government may feel
upset.”
China,
a big and assertive country as it is, provides an example of how
international media can bring pressure to its domestic affairs. In
September 1999, Zhang Jicheng, reporter for the Henan Science and
Technology Daily, on his train to Zhengzhou, heard two fellow
passengers from Wenlou village say their villagers had fallen ill for
a strange disease. From his subsequent investigation Zhang found an
awesome fact: The people of Wenlou contracted HIV through selling
plasma at local blood collection centers. Sources said that in one
extended family with fifty or sixty people, nearly everyone was
HIV-positive.
Zhang
wrote his news report, but his editor declined to publish the
article. He then sent his report to Huaxi Dushibao, a newspaper in
Sichuan. On January 18, 2000, Huaxi Dushibao ran Zhang's report about
the “mystery illness” in Henan. Local propaganda office ordered
Zhang to be removed from his position (but his newspaper secretly
protected him by just shifting him to another position).
Four
months later, on May 11, Dahe Daily ran a ten-page feature entitled
“AIDS in Henan”. Less than a year later, its editor was removed
from his postion.
The
real bombshell only came when Elizabeth Rosenthal's 1600-word story,
“In rural China, a steep price of poverty: dying of AIDS”
appeared in the New York Times on October 28. Wenlou became world
news. This put a great deal of international pressure on China to
face its HIV/AIDS problem. (2) The Chinese government later on began
developing policies to control HIV and pay compensations to people
who contracted HIV from tainted blood transfusions.
Notes
1. 'Protestors Flood Egypt Streets', Al Jazeera News, February 1, 2011/ Wikipedia
2. David
Bandurski and Martin Hala, “Investigative Journalism in China:
Eight Cases in Chinese Watchdog Journalism”, Hong Kong
University Press, 2010, p. 43-44
