The battle is starting to rage on in Vietnam between the communist government and internet bloggers. The only way for a “Communist Government” to keep control over it’s people is to regulate how information is transfered between the people. Well the fight right now is exactly what bloggers can report on and how critical they can be of their government.
“They follow me, they keep track of what I am writing, they keep track of all dissident bloggers. Anything they can do to harass us, they do,” said blogger Nguyen Thi Dung. “They have many people browsing the net, reporting things they don’t like, getting them taken down. It is a perfect copy of what the Chinese are doing on the Internet,” she told AFP.
To combat this the communist regime has drafted a 60 article draft decree bans “abusing the Internet” to oppose the government. It would force bloggers to post real names and contact details, make news websites obtain government approval to publish, and compel site administrators to report any banned online activity to authorities. This decree also forces companies like Facebook and Google into cooperating with the government into investigations to people who speak bad about their government.
Critics and bloggers alike are really worried that if this is passed then it will give the police a “very good legal framework to destroy freedom of speech.”
In the past few months the Vietnamese government has been tightening the screws on bloggers and currently 3 of them are facing trial for blogging negatively about the government.