Tag: In the Media

LIV co-founder and co-directer, Trinh Huu Long, was featured in Mekong Review’s January 27, 2023, weekly newsletter.  In this issue, they briefly discuss his journey and the challenges of running and operating his publication from Taiwan.

The following is a transcript of the interview:

Trinh Huu Long, Editor-in-Chief of Luat Khoa magazine

How did you come to be based in Taiwan?

I became a democracy activist and journalist in Vietnam in 2011, and left Vietnam in 2013 to work for a human rights NGO in the Philippines called VOICE. I guess since then I have become an activist living in exile. During my time at VOICE (2013–2016), I cofounded a small independent magazine called Luat Khoa to promote legal and political knowledge to the Vietnamese audience. This is still considered very sensitive in Vietnam. In 2016, I decided to quit my job at VOICE to dedicate my time to the magazine.

If you think of Vietnam as a smaller version of authoritarian China, you’ll know what kind of trouble I’d end up in if I returned. I considered [being based in] the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore because they were visa-free for Vietnamese citizens. But then Taiwan became an option when they relaxed the visa rules, so I moved to Taiwan on Christmas night in 2016.

What would you say is the biggest challenge of running a publication about Vietnam outside of the country?

No journalist wants to be living away from the places they cover. It is the last resort. It affects everything and makes almost everything harder to do, but it surely increases the chance of survival for the organisation.

Is there good Vietnamese food to be found in Taipei?

My Vietnamese friends will laugh out loud if they hear that someone asked me about food, because they truly think I’m the last person on Earth anyone should consult on this topic.

But yes, Taipei definitely has some good Vietnamese food (according to me), including restaurants and street vendors. I would recommend Madam Gill’s in Taipei, which is quite well-established, and if I may, Papa Phở in Taichung, which is a new and very nice restaurant opened just before the pandemic.

I also want to say that there are a hundred ways of making a Vietnamese dish, and they are very different from each other. I have no authority to judge. And be careful, we sometimes use the same name for different dishes, and different names for one kind of food, depending on location.

Is there a book about Vietnam that you think more people should read?

I would love to recommend The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. It is a novel that depicts Vietnam’s modern history through a family’s struggle and from a feminist perspective. You will not only know more about Vietnam but also feel more about the country reading this book.

How can people support Luat Khoa?

Please spread the word that independent media exists in Vietnam and Luat Khoa as well as its sister outlet — The Vietnamese Magazine — are willing to work with journalists, scholars, activists and others to produce quality content on politics and human rights.

If you can, please consider becoming a member of Luat Khoa. We are trying very hard to become a reader-funded media organisation.

Mekong Review is a quarterly English-language magazine of arts, literature, culture, politics, the environment and society in Asia, written by people from the region or those who know it well.

Its January 27, 2023, newsletter can be found here.

LIV co-founder and co-director, Trinh Huu Long, was cited in Southeast Asia Globe’s article titled, “Vietnamese cybersecurity law reveals Hanoi’s ‘obsession with control,’ written by Govi Snell. This feature, which was published on 23 November 2022, discusses the legal avenues the Vietnamese government uses to monitor online content in the country and its effects on Vietnamese cyberspace as a whole.

Snell’s article mainly focuses on the ramifications of Decree 53, a set of guidelines for the proper implementation of the 2018 Cybersecurity Law. This decree, which went into effect on 1 October 2022, compels tech companies in Vietnam to store all user information – including financial records, biometric data, ethnicity and political views – for a minimum of two years. Decree 53 also holds that if the Vietnamese government finds a user who has violated their guidelines on internet conduct, the state has the right to issue data collection requests from these companies which store the aforementioned user’s data.

Regarding Decree 53 and the actions of the Vietnamese government, Long says that the state has “lost control” over the information being spread through foreign social media platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter.

He adds, “Now [the Vietnamese government], they are gaining it back by forcing these foreign actors to comply with local laws almost like domestic ones. Without having a free platform to voice their opinions, citizens are certainly more vulnerable.”

Since the early 2000s, the internet and the use of social media has been on the rise in Vietnam. The popularity of the internet in the country led to the development of an online space which was initially free from government control and censorship. With the advent of Decree 53, Vietnamese cyberspace –  one of the last bastions of free speech and expression in the country – is slowly becoming more and more restricted due to government surveillance and the removal of any sensitive content that they deem to be a threat to national safety and security.

LIV co-founder and co-director, Trinh Huu Long, was cited in Southeast Asia Globe’s May 27, 2022 feature article titled, “Deadly confessions, the hidden abuse by Vietnam’s police,” written by Govi Snell, that tackles the culture of violence, brutality, and impunity prevalent in this organization.

Regarding Vietnam’s police, he states that police brutality is a common experience among all Vietnamese citizens, whether they experience it directly or indirectly. He also notes that the police force, as a whole, is above reprimands or sanctions.

He claims that the issue with Vietnam’s police is systemic in nature. Trinh Huu Long states, “The problem goes beyond [the] individual conduct of the police.” He adds, “The [Vietnam’s] justice system’s design almost always guarantees police brutality: no independent judiciary, no independent oversight from the Congress, the media, [civil society,] and detention centres are under the supervision of the very state organ that investigates crimes: the Ministry of Public Security.”

The remainder of the article discusses other irregularities and abuses committed by Vietnam’s police forces, such as the use of various forms of torture to quickly force confessions, the targeted imprisonment of activists for “spreading anti-state propaganda,” and the concealment of the deaths of individuals under police custody. The article also highlights the inaction of the Ministry of Public Service and the Vietnamese government, as a whole.

Also mentioned is the case of Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, or “Mother Mushroom,” as she is known internationally. She released a report in 2014 titled “Stop police killing citizens” which contained information about 31 deaths that occurred under police custody. In 2016, she was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for “conducting propaganda against the state” before being extradited to the United States two years later.

Vietnam’s police forces continue to operate with impunity, and even though some individual police officers have been reprimanded for their actions, large-scale change is not expected to happen anytime soon.

LIV co-director and co-founder, Vi Tran, was cited in Nikkei Asia’s July 20, 2022 feature article, “Asia’s odd couple: Vietnam and the U.S. find opposites attract,” which discusses the relationship between the two aforementioned countries.

The article goes into detail about several factors of U.S.-Vietnam relations such as the mutual benefits of trade, the quick re-establishment of ties despite the atrocities committed by both sides during the Vietnam war, and the apparent hypocrisy shown by the U.S. when dealing with Vietnam and China, despite the many similarities between both countries.

Regarding the differences in how the U.S. interacts with Vietnam and China, Vi Tran states, “[Biden] reassured that America stands for these universal values [freedom, democracy, rule of law].” She adds, “I really hope he will mean what he said.”

Ms. Tran also highlights the stance the U.S. takes regarding the issue of human rights in China and Vietnam. She says, “The U.S. calls both China and Vietnam authoritarian, but in public, its rhetoric is harsh on the former and weak on the latter.” In addition, she adds that the climate for activists in Vietnam has “hit a new low” and that in the past ten years, many civil society groups in Vietnam have been dissolved.

Towards the end of the article, Ms. Tran states that “[the Vietnamese communist party] is becoming more skilled at and prolific in restricting the internet, and the U.S. has not done enough to censure the censors.” She believes that U.S. leaders should be more active in “specifically and more forcefully defending civil liberties.”

She ends with, “Don’t be afraid, the Vietnamese people love the U.S.” and claims that the Vietnamese people would love America more if it was more proactive in upholding the proper observation of human rights in Vietnam.

The New York Times cited LIV co-founder and co-director, Trinh Huu Long, in their June 17, 2022 feature article, “She Spoke Out Against Vietnam’s Plans for Coal. Then She Was Arrested.” regarding the imprisonment of prominent Vietnamese environmental activist Nguy Thi Khanh.

Ms. Khanh, recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, was sentenced to two years in jail by the Hanoi People’s Court on June 17, 2022 for tax evasion. Her supporters claim that this tax evasion charge is bogus and that the real reason behind her arrest is due to her campaign against the use of coal in Vietnam.

In 2016, Ms. Khanh was successful in making the Vietnamese government cut down their coal-fired power by 20, 000 megawatts and this was seen as a significant victory for Vietnam’s environmentalists. Her efforts made Vietnam the “country with the largest installed capacity of solar and wind power in Southeast Asia.” However, several government officials pushed back against the use of renewable energy and wanted to return to the usage of coal for energy production.

In response to her arrest, Trinh Huu Long states, “This is a very strong signal from the Communist Party that they are now willing to go much further to control civil society.” He adds that  “[the Vietnamese government] will not tolerate even slight criticism.”

Vietnam was the 9th largest consumer of coal in the world. Due to Ms. Khanh’s efforts, the country is currently ranked as the 16th.