HANOI — Vietnam's leaders are stepping up their campaign against critical
blogs, ordering government investigators to arrest the operators of three
websites at a time when global Internet companies are growing more worried
about doing business in the tightly policed country.
A government statement issued
late Wednesday named three blogs that allegedly posted articles accusing the
government of corruption and human-rights abuses, describing the blogs as being
part of a "wicked plot of the hostile forces"—a term often used to
describe advocates of democratic reforms.
Two of the three sites vowed to
continue. One, Danlambao, or "The People's Journalism Blog," said in
a fresh posting Thursday that its anonymous operators are "prepared to be repressed
and imprisoned rather than leading the life of a dumb dog that dares not to
bark," paving the way for a deepening confrontation between Vietnam's
authoritarian leaders and its increasingly vibrant online community as the
country's once-booming economy slumps.
The Web has taken off here faster
than in many other up-and-coming nations. Around 34% of Vietnam's 90 million
people are online, a larger proportion than in more established neighbors such
as Thailand and Indonesia, driven in part by the rapid spread of high-speed
cellphone networks and a desire among younger Vietnamese to connect with the
rest of the world separately from the nation's state-run media.
Growing numbers of Vietnamese
have launched their own blogs in recent months, where they discuss everything
from traditional folk songs and where to buy secondhand iPhones to the
corruption that has accompanied a decadelong economic expansion here. One
prominent blogger, 60-year-old retired soldier Ng Thuong Thuy, writes
forcefully under his own name about injustices in Vietnam's legal systems,
especially the explosive issue of land rights which government-controlled media
rarely cover.
"State newspapers,"
said Mr. Thuy at his home in the southern suburbs of Hanoi recently, "are
only good for wrapping sticky rice."
But as Vietnam's boom turns to
bust amid a mounting pile of bad debts, its leaders are following other
countries such as China, Iran, Thailand and Malaysia by trying to rein in the
disruptive influence of the Internet. Vietnam's primary goal: to pressure bloggers
to stop pulling back the curtain on the country's excesses.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung's
government is considering new laws that will force people to use their real
names online, potentially chilling free speech and criticism of the government
in addition to the latest arrest orders.
Internet giants such as Google
Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are worried, too, people close to the situation say.
Vietnam's draft laws may require foreign Internet companies to abide by the
same rules as their Vietnamese counterparts. That means setting up expensive
cross-border data centers and censoring content—something that could force many
Internet companies to scrap plans to do business in Vietnam.
People familiar with the drafting
process say that the Asia Internet Coalition, a lobby group founded by Google,
eBay Inc., Yahoo, Nokia Corp. and Microsoft Corp.'s Skype unit, has asked
Vietnamese authorities to tone down the content of the law in case it stifles
the growth of Internet-driven businesses here. U.S. diplomats also have warned
authorities about the side effects of blocking sites such as Facebook Inc.'s social
media page, saying that it prevents Vietnamese entrepreneurs building
connections with potential partners both in Vietnam and around the world.
The Asia Internet Coalition
didn't respond to requests for comment. The Vietnamese government said the laws
haven't been finalized yet but are expected to be put into action by the end of
the year.
Some lower-ranking Vietnamese
officials privately say they are aware of these concerns, especially now that
the country is trying to accelerate the growth of its own local service sector
instead of relying too heavily on fragile export markets in Europe and the U.S.
In a report released earlier this
year, consultancy McKinsey & Co. estimated that Internet-related businesses
in Vietnam so far contribute around 1% to its $125 billion a year gross
domestic product—around the same proportion as in Turkey or Russia. That figure
is set to grow quickly as networks and electronic-payment systems expand, and
ordinary Vietnamese become more confident in using the Web, analysts say.
The government, too, has gotten
into the Internet business, financing a social-media site called go.vn to rival
Facebook but which requires users to register their government-issued
identification numbers. Software engineers at Google and computer security
company McAfee Inc meanwhile have reported detecting malicious software from
Vietnam which was apparently used to monitor dissidents and disable critical
websites.
But with the Communist Party's
top cadres facing a deluge of criticism as the economy continues to slow,
analysts say the authorities are likely to maintain their war against the Internet.
Mr. Thuy, the blogger in Hanoi's
suburbs, says he expects the conflict to widen as more people begin using the
Internet—and fears that many of them may inadvertently cross the invisible
boundary between legitimate criticism and the crime of spreading propaganda
against the state.
The authorities "can't
really contain the Internet," says another blogger, Nguyen Xuan Dien, who
has been detained for questioning in the past. "But the boundaries of what
we can and cannot write are growing vaguer, and it is easy to stray into
difficult territory," he says.
—Nguyen Anh Thu in Hanoi
contributed to this article.
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