Category: Uncategorized

The state of press freedom in Vietnam, particularly within state media, has been widely discussed over the past few decades. Although there is little debate that the environment has remained highly repressive, gaps and misconceptions persist in the existing literature.

To this day, many public statements and analyses still assert that private media is nonexistent in Vietnam and that state media functions solely as a mouthpiece for the Communist Party. Furthermore, the scope and impact of the party’s Press Plan 2025 have yet to receive the attention they warrant.

Today, Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV) is pleased to release a new report that offers fresh insights into the nuances and recent developments surrounding press freedom in Vietnam. Titled “Censorship in Vietnam – State Media Under Unprecedented Attack,” the report explores how state media has come under increasing pressure and control by the market-Leninist regime following what was considered a heyday for Vietnamese journalism, spanning from the early 2000s to the mid-2010s.

This report, authored by our partner Vietnam Media Project (VMP) and reviewed by The 88 Project, represents LIV’s inaugural effort to document and analyze the state of press freedom in Vietnam, with financial support from the East-West Management Institute (EWMI). We welcome any feedback and are committed to continuing this work in the coming year.

For more information, please contact:

Trịnh Hữu Long
Editor-in-Chief, Luật Khoa Magazine, a project of LIV
Email: long.trinh@liv.ngo

Executive Summary

• Although Vietnam is often recognized as a country lacking press freedom, the first two decades of the 2000s saw a vibrant period in media development brought about by the rise of the Internet and increasing commercialization. This period recently came to an end when the party-state tightened their control over the entire media system.
• Independent media in Vietnam has nearly been eradicated due to government crackdown. As of October 2024, the Vietnamese government holds 17 independent journalists in prison. All of them were arrested during the past five years. Three new significant cases were recorded in the first half of 2024.
• Domestically registered news outlets, often referred to as state media, also face increased hardship due to the government’s weaponization of laws and regulations. The most affected are those registered under public associations or heavily involved with private companies. They are labeled as part of the “privatization of the press” and subjected to punishment or demotion. Instances of punishment and fines have significantly increased in recent years.
• Half of the registered state press organizations have been banned from producing political news from 2019 to May 2024, due to the implementation of Press Plan 2025 — a reallocation strategy designed to centralize state media.  This move closely mirrors China’s approach of monopolizing political news through party-state entities.
• The Vietnamese government is focusing its resources towards creating six powerful party-state media conglomerates, encompassing the party’s mouthpiece, the police, the army, national news agencies, TV, and radio. These conglomerates are being positioned to spearhead the transformation of Vietnam’s digital media landscape, a development celebrated by tech giants.
• The Vietnamese government has become more sophisticated in utilizing technology to monitor news coverage and conduct surveillance on newsrooms. Evidence indicates that certain tools are being used to track removed articles and monitor media coverage by keywords and sentiments.
• The increasingly hostile media environment in Vietnam creates a climate of fear that pushes newsrooms into survival mode, erodes journalists’ will to resist, and encourages self-censorship. This situation is characterized by silence on “sensitive” events and uniform news coverage.

Table of Content

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

List of Tables and Figures
Glossary
List of Newspapers & Other Media Sources

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I: MECHANISM LIMITING PRESS FREEDOM
System of Control
Limited Space for Non-State Media
Foreign media: Difficulties in license acquisition
Crackdown on Independent Media
Main Policies Targeting the Press
Speech Crimes: The Penal Code
Press Law: Prohibited Acts
Sanctions for Misconduct: Decree 119/2020/NĐ-CP
Internet Regulations

CHAPTER II: HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND CHANGES
The Phase of Critical Journalism: 2000s – mid 2010s
The Phase of Heavy Crackdown (2019 – present)
Press Plan 2025: Press Quotas
Similarities to China
Effect on the media landscape

CHAPTER III: CENSORSHIP 2.0
No One is Safe: The Increasing Complexity of State Censorship
No Place to Hide: Tech-embedded Surveillance Over the Media
No Money No Talk: Big Corporations as “Another Propaganda Commission”
No More Resistance: The Toll of Self-censorship
“I did not feel like it was worth it anymore.”
“More Classified Stamps”: Professional Barriers Erected
A Blanket of Silence

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES

ANNEXES
Annex 1: Cases of Censorship
Annex 2: List of Imprisoned Journalists & Bloggers (as of October 2024)
Annex 3: Profiles of Prominent Independent Media
Annex 4: Prohibited acts – 2016 Press Law

Once upon a time, foreign social networks like Facebook and YouTube were channels where independent news and information flowed relatively freely into Vietnam’s highly repressive society. Activists used them to mobilize the public and organize social movements, journalists thrived on them to disseminate uncensored content, and ordinary citizens leveraged them to hold government officials accountable.

Those days are long gone.

Today, Legal Initiatives for Vietnam releases a new report, “Foreign Tech Companies in Vietnam: Challenges and Failures in Upholding Human Rights,” to shed light on how foreign tech companies have faced increasing pressure from the Vietnamese government regarding content moderation, user data access, and online discussion manipulation. The report also highlights these companies’ failures to address these issues in line with international human rights standards, effectively contributing to the development of digital authoritarianism in Vietnam.

​​In this report, LIV investigates the operations of major foreign tech companies in Vietnam to assess their human rights policies and practices regarding freedom of expression and the right to privacy. The report aims to contribute to the broader discussion on the tech sector’s human rights responsibilities in authoritarian contexts, identifying challenges and recommending policies and practices aligned with international human rights law.

The report begins by introducing the political and legal context of Vietnam, a market-Leninist regime where the authoritarian government, led by the Vietnamese Communist Party, embraces an open and competitive market economy. While this political regime, governing a population of 100 million, offers attractive business opportunities, it also poses significant risks to businesses, including the tech sector.

Readers will find a detailed account of the laws and regulations impacting foreign tech companies, including the Law on Information Technology, the Law on Cybersecurity, Decree 72/2013/NĐ-CP, Decree 15/2020/NĐ-CP, Decree 53/2022/NĐ-CP, and Decree 13/2023/NĐ-CP. These laws not only heavily restrict Vietnamese citizens from exercising free speech online by criminalizing online speech but also compel tech companies to cooperate extensively with the government in moderating content and providing access to users’ data. As the report demonstrates, Vietnam’s Internet governance is based on a legal system intentionally designed to be vague and overbroad, allowing for arbitrary interpretation and actions by the state. Often, these regulations and actions do not meet the Three-Part Test under the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Additionally, the report examines a draft decree on Internet governance expected to be issued in 2024, which will play a central role in controlling the Internet in Vietnam. The drafters explicitly aim to force social networks, regardless of the platforms’ nationality, to verify users’ identities if they wish to continue operating in Vietnam. Combined with other regulations, this draft decree puts Vietnamese users at risk of having their real identities exposed to the authorities.

The core part of the report provides a detailed account of how major foreign tech companies such as Meta/Facebook, Google, Netflix, TikTok, and Apple handle legal requirements and government requests on online speech and users’ data.

Our findings show a concerning situation where these companies almost always comply with an increasing number of content moderation requests from the Vietnamese government, with the compliance rate consistently above 90% over the years, including geographical restrictions and content removals. At the same time, the government and some tech companies acknowledge that a significant portion of the restricted or removed content is government criticism, which is protected speech under international human rights law. Notably, Meta even maintains a secret list of Vietnamese Communist Party’s officials who are immune from criticism on their platform, Facebook.

Regarding users’ data, our findings demonstrate a positive practice by the companies, with a very low number of government requests being complied with. Additionally, these companies—with the exception of TikTok, for which we lack evidence on the location of Vietnamese users’ data—consistently store users’ sensitive data outside the country while maintaining cache servers in Vietnam where non-sensitive users’ data is processed.

The report also highlights an alarming trend of the Vietnamese government deploying cyber troops and trolls to manipulate online discussions, spread disinformation, and make false reports on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. The government-backed Force 47’s and Task Force 35’s operations have been overwhelmingly effective in manipulating Facebook and YouTube, targeting government critics, including human rights defenders and marginalized communities, while these platforms have taken almost no concrete actions to prevent them.

However, the report also shows instances of foreign tech companies clashing with the government, indicating both a significant resistance to the government’s illegitimate requests and their inability to fully comply with these requests. Facebook notably suffered a severe traffic slowdown in early 2020 due to government intervention and could only restore normal operations after agreeing to censor more political content. Other tech companies have faced major pressure from the government to open local offices and allow government inspectors access.

Although the report focuses on foreign tech companies’ operations, it also provides examples of how Vietnamese users are punished criminally and administratively by the government. These examples should inform the companies about the costs their users must pay to exercise basic human rights.

Finally, the report offers a list of recommendations for both foreign tech companies and governments to improve human rights policies and practices in the tech sector. Recommendations for tech companies include resisting the government’s illegitimate requests for content moderation and user data, implementing end-to-end encryption to protect user data, removing government-backed forces that manipulate platforms, being more transparent in handling government requests, and supporting nonprofits and human rights defenders. For governments, the recommendations include enforcing existing treaties with the Vietnamese government to ensure a free and open Internet, introducing more human rights-friendly legislation, and holding tech companies accountable for their overseas human rights practices.

Thank you for your attention.

We hope you will find the report useful, and we appreciate any feedback.

Contacts:

• Trần Quỳnh Vi, Executive Director, vi.tran@liv.ngo.
• Trịnh Hữu Long, Editor-in-Chief, author, long.trinh@liv.ngo.

Learn more about LIV:

About us

Legal Initiatives for Vietnam’s (LIV) mission is to build a democratic society in Vietnam through independent journalism, research, and education. LIV was founded by Trịnh Hữu Long, Trần Quỳnh-Vi, Phạm Đoan Trang and Trương Tự Minh in 2014 as a small legal publication, which has now become its core project

Legal Initiatives for VietnamLIV Staff