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Tag: Freedom of Speech

  • LIV’s Trinh Huu Long and Pham Doan Trang in VICE: Vietnam Criticises ‘Inappropriate’ US Freedom Award for Jailed Journalist

    After the Vietnamese government’s pronouncements that Pham Doan Trang’s International Women of Courage Award was “unobjective” and “inappropriate,” Legal Initiatives for VIETNAM co-director Trinh Huu Long, a colleague of the famed dissident, thanks the United States for supporting Trang and other Vietnamese human defenders.

    • Title: Vietnam Criticises ‘Inappropriate’ US Freedom Award for Jailed Journalist
    • Publish Date: March 18, 2022
    • Publisher: VICE

    Excerpt:

    This week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced jailed Vietnamese dissident journalist Pham Doan Trang as a winner of the International Women of Courage prize—an annual award given by the Department of State to honor women advocating for human rights, peace, justice, and gender equity around the world.

    But the government of Vietnam—a communist-ruled one-party state—did not take kindly to the honor.

    At a press conference on Thursday, Vietnam’s foreign ministry spokesperson Le Thi Thu Hang responded to the U.S. giving Trang the courage award. Hang said the award was “unobjective” and “inappropriate” as Trang had broken Vietnamese law and been tried in court.

    The U.S. prize was “not conducive for the development of bilateral relations,” she said.

    Trang, who was arrested in October, was held without sentencing until late last year. On Dec. 14, a Hanoi court sentenced her to nine years’ imprisonment for spreading “anti-state propaganda.”

    The response showcases a sticking point between the two countries: human rights. Last year, Joe Biden’s administration said the U.S. relationship with Vietnam will remain limited until Hanoi cleans up its human rights record.

    Although the award has been critiqued by the government, Vietnamese activists celebrated the support given to Trang.

    “I thank the U.S. for standing with Trang and human rights defenders in Vietnam,” Trinh Huu Long, the co-founder of pro-democracy nonprofit Legal Initiatives for Vietnam, told VICE World News.

    “It is the Vietnamese government who consistently and systematically violates their own constitution and the international human rights treaties that they have ratified when [they] arrest and put people like Trang away for years.”

    Long met Trang at a 2011 protest in Hanoi during the summer known as Mùa Hè Đỏ Lửa or “The Flaming Summer”—a series of rallies protesting Chinese encroachment in the South China Sea. The two became friends and co-founded Legal Initiatives for Vietnam. Long is now based in Taiwan so he, unlike so many of Vietnam’s activists, can criticise the ruling communist party and not risk being jailed.

    Long said the Vietnamese constitution guarantees the right to free speech and political participation, but charging activists with anti-state propaganda is common.

    “It is a very common charge against journalists, activists, and dissidents in Vietnam,” he said. “There is no freedom of speech.”

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  • Pham Doan Trang in Radio Free Asia: Vietnam’s crackdown target: citizens who can inspire others

    The Vietnamese Communist Party has been arresting dissidents, including independent journalists, religious figures, land rights activists and environmentalists- generally, anyone who can mobilize and influence their fellow citizens.  

    Excerpt:

    The political activist Pham Doan Trang, who was arrested in October 2020, was a particular headache for the Vietnamese government as she was not philosophically inclined in her writing. Instead, she communicated Vietnamese laws, constitutional rights, and procedures in ways that ordinary people could understand. She exposed how the government violated its own laws, garnering her a large following. She’s now serving a nine-year sentence for spreading “propaganda against the state.”

    That Mother Mushroom and Pham Doan Trang had won multiple foreign awards and had deep international networks of support only amplified their voices at home. International recognition raised concerns of foreign interference amongst the conservative party elite.

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    Vietnams crackdown target citizens who can inspire others Radio Free Asia
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  • Pham Doan Trang in HRW World Report 2022: Vietnam Events in 2021

    Renowned journalist and human rights defender Pham Doan Trang is just one of the many Vietnamese dissidents and activists who suffered injustice in the hands of the VCP last year.  In this report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) chronicles the political and human rights suppression in Vietnam.

    Excerpt:

    Basic civil and political rights are systematically suppressed in Vietnam. The government, under the one-party rule of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), tightened the grip on freedom of expression, freedom of association, peaceful assembly, freedom of movement and freedom of religion. teacher.

    In 2021, independent trade unions or any organization or group considered to be a threat to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power will still be banned from establishing and operating. Authorities block access to politically sensitive websites and pressure telecommunications and social media companies to remove or limit content critical of the government or ruling party.

    Those who speak out critical of the party or government face intimidation, harassment, impediment from movement, arbitrary detention and arrest, and imprisonment after unfair trials. . Police detained political suspects for months without contacting their lawyers and brutally interrogated them. Party-controlled courts convict activists and bloggers on fabricated national security charges.

    Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Opinion and Freedom of Speech

    Dissidents and human rights activists regularly face the risk of harassment, intimidation, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. In 2021, Vietnamese courts have tried at least 32 people guilty of posting critical comments about the government, then sentenced them to years in prison. Police arrested at least 26 others on fabricated political charges.

    The government regularly applies article 117 of the penal code, which criminalizes the acts of “making, storing, disseminating or propagating information, documents and items against the State” to punish criminals. civil society activist.

    Famous dissident Pham Doan Trang was detained for more than a year without being able to see his lawyer or family.

    Download the article in Vietnamese:

    World Report 2022 Viet Nam Human Rights Watch
    World Report 2022_ Việt Nam _ Human Rights Watch.pdf
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    Download the article in English:

    World Report 2022 Vietnam Human Rights Watch
    World Report 2022_ Vietnam _ Human Rights Watch.pdf
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  • Pham Doan Trang in Human Rights Watch: Vietnam: Dozens of Rights Activists Detained, Tried

    According to HRW, the Vietnamese government handed down long sentences to dissidents and activists after unfair trials on fabricated charges.

    Excerpt:

    The Vietnamese government, in 2021, systematically punished activists who challenged the repressive status quo, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2022. In a year dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the 13th Communist Party Congress in January, and national elections in May, the authorities imprisoned at least 63 people for expressing opinions or joining groups deemed hostile to the government, with many receiving very long prison sentences after unfair trials.

    “The Vietnamese government hid behind the Covid-19 pandemic to carry out a severe crackdown on peaceful activism that largely went unnoticed outside of Vietnam,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government seems to want to wipe out the growing dissident movement with devastating prison sentences before the world starts paying attention again.”

    The Vietnamese government severely restricts basic civil and political rights, including freedom of expression, speech, information, association, peaceful assembly, and freedom of religion and belief. The country has no free and independent media. The government does not allow the formation of political parties or independent human rights organizations, and intrusively manages all religious institutions.

    People who publicly criticize the government or Communist Party leaders on social media routinely face harassment, intimidation, intrusive surveillance, restrictions on freedom of movement, physical assault, and arrest. After being detained for exercising their rights, people face abusive interrogation, long detention periods without access to legal counsel or their families, and trial by politically controlled courts meting out increasingly lengthy prison sentences.

    In January, three members of the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam – Pham Chi Dung, Nguyen Tuong Thuy, and Le Huu Minh Tuan – were convicted and sentenced to between 11 and 15 years in prison. A court sentenced a land rights activist, Can Thi Theu, and her son Trinh Ba Tu, contributors to the Liberal Publishing House, to eight years in prison each in May; and writer Pham Chi Thanh to five and a half years in prison in July. In October, a court in Can Tho convicted and sentenced five members of the Clean Newspaper – Truong Chau Huu Danh, Doan Kien Giang, Le The Thang, Nguyen Phuoc Trung Bao, and Nguyen Thanh Nha – to between two years and four and a half years in prison. In December, courts sentenced prominent blogger Pham Doan Trang to nine years, land rights activists Trinh Ba Phuong to 10 years and Nguyen Thi Tam to six years, democracy campaigner Do Nam Trung to 10 years, and independent political candidate Le Trong Hung to five years in prison. All were charged with propaganda against the state under article 117 (or article 88), or with abusing the rights to freedom and democracy to infringe upon the interests of the state under article 331, of the penal code.

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    Vietnam Dozens of Rights Activists Detained Tried Human Rights Watch
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  • France Diplomacy: Vietnam – France deplores the sentencing of Pham Doan Trang

    France reacts on the conviction of human rights defender and journalist Pham Doan Trang and calls for her release.

    Excerpt:

    France deplores the conviction and sentencing to nine year’s imprisonment of Vietnamese journalist Pham Doan Trang, one of the country’s most prominent human rights defenders and one of three recipients of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Press Freedom Award in 2019.

    France calls for Ms. Pham Doan Trang’s release and reaffirms its commitment to the freedom of speech and opinion. These rights and liberties are guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Vietnam is a party.

    France calls on Vietnam to abide by the international commitments that it has undertaken freely.

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    Vietnam France deplores the sentencing of Pham Doan Trang Dec 15 Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs
    Vietnam – France deplores the sentencing of Pham Doan Trang (Dec. 15) – Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs.pdf
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  • LIV’s Vi Tran in The Intercept: Facebook lets Vietnam’s Cyberarmy Target Dissidents, Rejecting A Celebrity’s Plea

    Vi Tran, co-director of Legal Initiatives for VIETNAM shared that Facebook should be, at the very least, honest to its users whenever their posts or accounts gets suspended.

    Excerpt:

    Mai Khoi, the “Lady Gaga of Vietnam,” wants that country’s vigilante force kicked off Facebook. The company told her the group is well within its rules.

    For the past two years, Do Nguyen Mai Khoi has been trying painfully, futilely, to get Facebook to care about Vietnam. The Vietnamese singer and pro-democracy activist, known best simply as Mai Khoi, has tried tirelessly to warn the company of a thousands-strong pro-government Facebook group of police, military, and other Communist party loyalists who collaborate to get online dissidents booted and offline dissidents jailed. Her evidence of the group’s activity is ample, her arguments are clear, and despite the constant risk of reprisal from her own country’s leadership, her determination seemingly inexhaustible. The only problem is that Facebook doesn’t seem interested at all.

    Facebook, once briefly heralded as a godsend for a country like Vietnam, where social media allows citizens to squeeze past the state’s censorship stranglehold on traditional media, has now become just another means of strangulation. Private groups filled with government partisans coordinate takedown campaigns — or worse — against any views deemed “reactionary” by the Vietnamese state, while Facebook continues to do little but pay lip service to ideals of free expression. The Intercept was able to gain access to one such closed-door Vietnamese censorship brigade, named “E47,” where it’s obvious, through Facebook’s apparent indifference, that the company has failed its users terribly.

    To ensure that it continues to enjoy a dominant, highly lucrative share share of Vietnam’s corner of the internet — reportedly worth $1 billion annually — Facebook increasingly complies with content removal requests submitted by the country’s government on the basis that the content itself is illegal in Vietnam. It’s a form of censorship employed by governments worldwide, and one that Vietnam seems to have played hardball to enforce: In April, Reuters reported that the Vietnamese government slowed Facebook’s servers to the point of inoperability, leading Facebook to agree to comply with more official takedown requests.

    But as Mai Khoi discovered, Vietnamese Facebook is also plagued by unofficial censorship, achieved not by declaring content illegal but by coordinating users to flag it for violating Facebook’s own content rules, known as the “Community Standards.” This dupes Facebook into removing ordinary political speech as though it were hate speech, violent incitement, or gory video.

    In a sign of just how desperate the situation has become, many Vietnamese dissidents threatened by Facebook’s inaction say that for now, they’d settle for honesty. “Dealing with Facebook is like a walk in the dark for us activists,” said Vi Tran, co-founder of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam, a pro-democracy group. “If Facebook decides to delete a status for any reason, please let us know what is the reason. Giving us the ‘violation of Community Standards’ is not enough because it is arbitrary and vague.”

    Read the full article here.  

  • LIV’s Trinh Huu Long in VICE: Facebook Complicit in Censoring Posts in Vietnam, According to Amnesty International

    Legal Initiatives for VIETNAM co-founder Trinh Huu Long shares how their online magazines’ audience reach was greatly affected by Facebook’s agreement to censor anti-government posts in Vietnam.  Amnesty International report says that there is a surge of people landing in jails for online criticism of the government.

    Excerpt:

    Facebook is complicit in a dramatic increase in censorship on the platform in Vietnam, Amnesty International said Tuesday, in a new report detailing a surge in people jailed for their social media posts.

    In the 78-page report, Amnesty compiled information from Facebook and Google as well as interviews with human rights activists. The organization found that Vietnam is currently holding 170 prisoners of conscience — the highest they’ve ever recorded. Of this, 69 were imprisoned for online activism. This includes those who criticized authorities’ response to COVID-19 and shared independent information about human rights. These posts are seen to infringe upon the government’s interests, which could lead to imprisonment under Articles 117 or 331 of the Criminal Code.

    According to the report, human rights defenders have been increasingly facing harassment in recent years, receiving messages that include death threats, suspected to come from state-sponsored cyber troops like the Du Luan Vien, also known as “opinion shapers” who target Facebook activist pages.

    Similarly, Force 47, a government-run cyberspace army believed to have 10,000 members, allegedly hacks anti-government websites and spreads pro-government messages online. All this to “fight against wrong views and distorted information on the internet.”

    The existence of such measures has left many people in Vietnam in fear. Facebook remains the most widely-used social media platform in the country, a rare outlet in the one party state where the government heavily restricts and regulates its citizens’ internet use. In 2018, digital advertising revenue in Vietnam amounted to around $550 million, of which 70 percent went to Facebook and Google, Reuters reported, citing Vietnam-based market researcher Ants.

    In the same year, the Vietnamese government passed a cybersecurity law that compels tech giants like Facebook and Google to store user data and censor content the government deems offensive. In April this year, Facebook agreed to censor posts in Vietnam after its local servers were taken offline, reportedly by actions from state-owned telecommunications companies. Facebook said it reluctantly complied with the government’s request to “restrict access to content which it has deemed to be illegal.” Most content restricted locally are still available outside Vietnam.

    The increased censorship worries human rights groups and organizations that address local politics and social issues.

    “We have used Facebook since day one of our operation back in 2014. For the first four years, it was amazing. We were able to spread our message wide and far. But since 2018, our Facebook page’s traffic has been reduced dramatically,” Trinh Huu Long, co-founder of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV), an online magazine dedicated to discussing political and social issues in Vietnam told VICE World News.

    He said that three years ago, their Facebook posts could easily reach roughly 50,000 people but today, they’d be lucky to even get to 20,000.

    Nearly two months ago, one of LIV’s co-founders was arrested for “making, storing, disseminating or propagandising information, materials and products that aim to oppose the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” She is currently facing 20 years in jail. Such moves have led the magazine to change the way they disseminate their content, including the use of newsletters and channels on mobile messaging app Telegram. They are also currently trying to develop an app for their website.

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    Facebook Complicit in Censoring Posts in Vietnam According to Amnesty International
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  • Pham Doan Trang in Amnesty International Viet Nam: Let us breathe! Censorship and criminalization of online expression in Viet Nam

    Last year, Amnesty International talked Pham Doan Trang, co-founder of Luat Khoa Tap Chi, an independent online legal magazine.  Trang explained: “There are hundreds of newspapers, but there is only one chief editor who decides what appears in every newspaper in Viet Nam and that person is the head of the [Communist Party of Viet Nam’s] propaganda department.”

    Pham Doan Trang is now one of the country’s prisoner of conscience.

    Title: Viet Nam: Let us breathe! Censorship and criminalization of online expression in Viet Nam
    Publish Date: November 20, 2020
    Publisher: Amnesty International

    Excerpt:

    In recent years, the Vietnamese authorities have mounted a major crackdown against those who express critical views online. This report reveals how social media users in Viet Nam face the constant threat of arbitrary arrest, prosecution and other forms of harassment in retaliation for exercising their right to freedom of expression online. In addition to state repression, social media users are increasingly faced with arbitrary censorship when they seek to share critical views online. As this report details, some of the world’s largest technology companies – Facebook and Google – are playing an increasingly complicit role in the Vietnamese authorities’ censorship regime.

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  • LIV’s Trinh Huu Long in Los Angeles Times: Facebook touts free speech. In Vietnam, it’s aiding in censorship

    Vietnam’s restrictive policy on press, free speech and expression makes Facebook the best alternative platform for citizens to let their voices be heard.  Recently, Facebook blocked and suspended accounts criticizing the government, but Legal Initiatives for VIETNAM co-founder, Trinh Huu Long said much as he dislikes Facebook, he will have to stick with them.

    Excerpt:

    In a country with no independent media, Facebook provides the only platform where Vietnamese can read about contentious topics such as Dong Tam, a village outside Hanoi where residents were fighting authorities’ plans to seize farmland to build a factory.

    Facebook, whose site was translated into Vietnamese in 2008, now counts more than half the country’s people among its account holders. The popular platform has enabled government critics and pro-democracy activists — in both Vietnam and the United States — to bypass the communist system’s strict controls on the media.

    But in the last several years, the company has repeatedly censored dissent in Vietnam, trying to placate a repressive government that has threatened to shut Facebook down if it does not comply, The Times found.

    In interviews, dozens of Vietnamese activists, human rights advocates and former Facebook officials say the company has blocked posts by hundreds of users, often with little explanation.

    A man uses a laptop at a coffee shop in downtown Hanoi.

    Facebook has also barred Hanoi’s critics — including a Southern California-based opposition group — from buying ads to boost readership and has failed to stop pro-government trolls from swamping the platform to get dissidents’ posts removed.

    Instead of using its leverage as Vietnam’s biggest media platform to hold the line against censorship, Facebook has, in effect, become an accomplice in the government’s intensifying repression of pro-democracy voices, critics say.

    Facebook usually restricts posts and users for one of two reasons — violations of its “community standards,” which are rules the company says apply to users worldwide, or “local laws.” Posts in the latter category are blocked in the country where they are illegal but remain accessible elsewhere.

    Access Now, a digital rights group that assists users who believe their Facebook access has been improperly restricted, said the company rarely explains its decisions to block or restore accounts — except to say they violated community standards.

    Trinh Huu Long, a Hanoi critic who lives in Taiwan and runs a nonprofit online magazine called Luat Khoa, said he began exploring other modes of distribution after Facebook repeatedly blocked articles that had nothing to do with Vietnam. But he determined that abandoning the platform would drastically shrink his readership.

    “Facebook is the king in Vietnam,” he said. “Content has to go through Facebook to reach an audience. So, much as I dislike Facebook, I have to stick with them.”

    Read the full article here.

  • Pham Doan Trang in The Hill: A big win for big brother in Hanoi

    The 2019 North Korea–United States Hanoi Summit put Vietnam at the center of attention and was hailed as an “economic miracle.” But, behind the gloss is repression suffered by its citizens.  One of them is Pham Doan Trang, a journalist and blogger, who suffers from harassment and was beaten by the authorities for exercising her basic right- freedom of speech.

    Excerpt:

    “These days, West Hanoi is booming,” crowed Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer on location of the Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un scripted reality show in Hanoi. The talking heads were quick to point out that Chairman Kim was remiss in not taking a tour of the shiny housing developments arising from the economic miracle of Vietnam’s industrial sector. The White House pointed to more good news, with nearly $13 billion in sales of U.S.-manufactured aircraft and engines to Viet Air and Bamboo Air.

    Behind the Cinderella success story, however, was a back story: the actual reality of one-party Communist state repression. Political dissidents are routinely beaten by plainclothes police or hauled into court, tried for subversion and sentenced to long prison terms. True, Vietnam is not a gulag state on the order of North Korea, but it’s an Orwellian nightmare for human rights advocates all the same.

    Other targets of the Vietnamese police include blogger Pham Doan Trang, a contributor to Luat khoa Tap chi, an online magazine that focuses on law and human rights. On August 15 of last year, fellow activists reported on their Facebook pages that Trang was taken to the police headquarters that night and beaten repeatedly.

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    A big win for big brother in Hanoi TheHill
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