Despite suppression by extrajudicial punishment, social
media continue to grow.
Although the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and
Communications says media agencies are steadily increasing, the hidden fact is
that all of these media outlets are controlled by the government in various
forms. But they are fighting a losing battle against hundreds of people who are
using social media to defy authority.
Vietnam Right Now, just launched on March 24 this year,
is the first alternative news site in English, whose mission is to report human
rights violations in Vietnam to the world. Civil society media organizations
have been trying to advocate for human rights and democracy in Vietnam despite
the challenges they face.
In addition to alternative media, growing numbers are now
turning to their Facebook pages or blogs as a medium to voice their opinions in
defiance of all political repressions. While the Vietnamese government may not
loosen its grip on mainstream media in the near term, it can hardly quell the
growing voices of disaffection on the Internet.
But they are trying at a multiple. The government tightly
controls the mainstream media through a system of propaganda offices working at
both the national and provincial levels, holding regular meetings with the
press to mould them into the ruling Communist Party line, although propagandists
often euphemistically mention these meetings as “discussions to guide public
opinion.”
It is understandable that the party, although trying to
control the press via these “guiding discussions,” doesn’t want the
international community to know about them. So on the one hand it orders
editors-in-chief to convey the party’s editorial direction to subordinate
journalists while on the other it wants the press to keep extremely secret its
control via such meetings. Unsurprisingly, there is an unwritten law that
editors-in-chief must be party members, which ensures that they act on behalf
of the party rather than the people.
One of the most effective tools to control the press,
small as it seems, is the press card. A small badge, it appears to no different
from an ordinary press card you might find in any nation, except that it is
issued by the Vietnamese government rather than a professional, civil society
organization.
Article 14 of the Vietnamese Press Law defines a
journalist as someone “who meets political, ethical and professional standards
set by the State” and “is granted a press card.” And a press card is granted by
the Ministry of Information and Communication to a reporter only when he or she
meets a set of requirements. Unfortunately all of those requirements are hard
to meet, especially for reporters who tend to criticize the party.
Worse, by rejecting independent journalists, the
government denies the obligation to protect both journalists and freedom of
information. It gives the green light for police forces and thugs to persecute
bloggers. A 2012 report by RED Communication pointed out that dozens of
journalists without press cards have fallen victim to various forms of
obstruction, including physical assault.
At the same time, any potential cooperation between
mainstream media and alternative media is inhibited. On February 26, 2013,
Nguyen Dac Kien, a reporter for Gia Dinh & Xa Hoi (Family and Society),
openly criticized the General Secretary as being too judgmental and having
committed libel in considering freedom of expression as moral deterioration.
The article was published on the popular political blog Anh Ba Sam in the
morning, and early that afternoon the newspaper’s leaders held a meeting with
Kien and fired him.
In 2013, as Asia Sentinel reported, the authorities also
arrested and sentenced three bloggers, two of whom are famous journalists:
Truong Duy Nhat, Pham Viet Dao, and Dinh Nhat Uy.
As an example of attempts to control the growing army of
online activists, on Jan. 2013, the head of the Hanoi Party Committee’s
Propaganda Department, Ho Quang Loi, in a meeting to review the press’s
activities in 2012, said the Department had set up a force of 900
“rumormongers” across the city “to fully exploit the power of propagandists.”
At the same time, the City’s press, “in obedience to the orders from the
superiors in dealing with sensitive cases,” has founded teams of
“button-pressing, rapid response journalists”.
“Rumormongers” and “rapid response journalists” have
since become popular terms to mean those who are paid by the party to shape
public opinions online, the Vietnam version of China’s “50-centers” or the
“50-Cent Party,” as in China they are said to be paid 50 cents for every post
that steers a discussion away from anti-party content or that advances the
Communist Party line.
In 2013, the cyber troops have gone beyond being just
“rumormongers” to becoming a real specter to bloggers who use social media as a
medium to raise and disseminate their views and to mainstream journalists who
tend to be progressive. No one knows the exact number of cyber troops but,
given the fact that there are dozens of blogs and thousands of comments
attacking democracy supporters each day, and Hanoi alone has 900 rumormongers,
there must be thousands of cyber troops nationwide.
These hidden troops browse the blogosphere every day,
hastily producing articles in favor of the government’s new policies and
against any critic. They also closely follow prominent bloggers and journalists
to shape public opinions via those “hubs” by using crude language to intimidate
and quell dissident voices.
Not just individual journalists and bloggers, even
mainstream newspapers such as the widely-circulated Tuoi Tre (Youth) Daily,
Thanh Nien, and the emerging Mot The Gioi (One World) were targeted by the
cyber troops, alleged to have “disseminated wrongful and misleading
information”, “smeared the image of the party and the state”, even “committed
high treason.” In many cases, cyber troops even went further by intruding into
netizens’ privacy and producing slanderous information about their “enemies”
including bloggers, human rights activists and political dissidents.
Thus today bloggers and journalists do not just have to
protect themselves from propagandists, police and thugs, but they must also
“survive” massive denunciations by cyber troops. They have to write with the
specter of cyber troops looming over their head.
Any light at the end of the tunnel?
Vietnam became a member of the United Nations Human
Rights Council for 2014-2016. Human rights activists hope they can take
advantage of the UN human rights mechanisms to protect and promote rights in
Vietnam, with freedom of opinion and expression seemingly the most widespread
violated rights.
The good news is also that in the past five years, some
alternative media have emerged, including Dan Luan and Bauxite Vietnam, which
were established in 2009, Nhat Ky Yeu Nuoc or the Patriotic Diary, and Dan Lam
Bao (Citizen Journalism), est. 2010, the Dien Dan Xa Hoi Dan Su (Civil Society
Forum), est. 2013.
Pham Doan Trang is a journalist and blogger from Hanoi, Vietnam
