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Tag: Online Expression

  • Vietnam Briefing: Vietnam Steps Up Crackdown On Internet Freedom With Proposed Social Media Regulations

    Vietnam Briefing: Vietnam Steps Up Crackdown On Internet Freedom With Proposed Social Media Regulations

    The Vietnam Briefing, which is released every Monday morning Vietnam time, looks at Vietnam’s social and political developments of the past week.

    Source:  The Vietnamese Magazine

    Vietnam proposes new social media regulations to take down ‘illegal content:’ Reuters sources

    • Reuters on April 21 reported based on information from people with knowledge of the matter that Vietnam is planning to adopt new regulations requiring foreign social media companies to “take down content it deems illegal within 24 hours.”
    • The move is seen as another effort by the Vietnamese authorities to crackdown on internet freedom and tighten control over online discourse in a country where the government already shows little tolerance for dissenting opinions or criticisms of the regime.
    • According to Reuters, the planned amendments to current cyber laws will require foreign media platforms to take down “illegal content and services” within the 24-hour time frame while “illegal live streams” must be blocked within three hours of notice, and content that “harms national security” must be taken down immediately.
    • Reuters sources also said that these amendments currently remain confidential and are expected to be signed into law by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in May and become effective in July. Social media companies that fail to take down “illegal content” within the permitted time frame risk having their platforms blocked in Vietnam, the sources added.
    • Representatives from popular social media platforms in Vietnam, including Meta’s Facebook and Google-owned Youtube, declined to comment. Meanwhile, the Chinese-owned video sharing platform Tiktok told Reuters that it would comply with local laws “to ensure TikTok remains a safe space for creative expression,” adding that the company would “take down content that breaks platform guidelines.”
    • Vietnam, with a population of nearly 100 million, continues to rank among Facebook and Youtube’s top markets by user numbers and “is more profitable than many European markets,” according to Reuters sources. It is estimated that Facebook has up to 70 million users in Vietnam while Youtube has 60 million and TikTok has 20 million.
    • The new proposed regulations have raised concerns from human rights organizations that they could be used as a repressive tool to worsen the already restrictive internet environment in Vietnam.
    • “In Vietnam, social media, including Facebook, is one of the very few places for local people to express their opposition,” said Ming Yu Hah, deputy regional director of campaigns in East and Southeast Asia for Amnesty International, in the face of the threats posed by the proposed new laws.
    • “They face the risk of being imprisoned for years if their posts are deemed to violate the law,” she said, adding that such laws are “an existential threat to the freedom of expression in Vietnam.”

    Vietnamese court upholds citizen journalist Le Trong Hung’s sentencing in an opaque appeals trial

    • Do Le Na, wife of the currently jailed citizen journalist Le Trong Hung, wrote on her Facebook account on April 22 that a Hanoi Court had held an appeals trial for her husband on April 19 and consequently upheld his previous sentencing of five years in prison and five years probation.
    • Most notably, Na said that the court had neither informed her nor Hung’s lawyer about the appeals trial, adding that she only learned about the court results when she went to Hanoi Detention Center No. 1 on April 22 to send some necessities to her husband while asking for the procedures regarding his visitations.
    • Na said that there was a heavy plainclothes police presence guarding her and other local activists’ houses on the date of Le Trong Hung’s appeals hearing, but that she was unsure about their motive at the time. She added that she was “surprised” and “angry” about the Vietnamese authorities’ unlawful prevention of the Hung family from attending the hearing, even though the court previously announced that it would be an open trial.

    Vietnam court jails 12 people with links to a U.S.-based organization on subversion charges

    RFA:

    • RFA reported that a court in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City on April 18 had sentenced 12 Vietnamese to prison on charges of supporting a U.S.-based exile group classified as a “terrorist organization” by Hanoi. The convicted people’s sentencing ranges from three to 13 years in prison while their defense attorneys said the trial was flawed and that it violated legal principles.
    • Prosecutors charged the group with “carrying out activities aimed at overthrowing the government,” under Article 109 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, for recruiting others to join the foreign-based Provisional Government of Vietnam. Defendant Tran Thi Ngoc Xuan, who received a 13-year prison term, was described by prosecutors as the most active member of the alleged plot.
    • However, attorney Nguyen Van Mieng, who defended Xuan, told RFA in an interview that standards of fairness in the trial were violated and jeopardized, given the Ho Chi Minh City court’s decision to try different defendants gathered from separate parts of the country in the same trial.
    • “This trial violated legal procedures, as it gathered nine cases from different provinces and cities and then combined them in a single trial,” Mieng said. “These 12 people had no relationship or links with each other,” he added.
    • Based in Orange County, California, the Provisional Government of Vietnam was founded in 1991 by former soldiers and refugees loyal to the South Vietnamese government, which was in power prior to 1975. At least 18 Vietnamese have been jailed in recent years for their alleged involvement with the group.

    Vietnamese organizations urge UN members not to vote for Vietnam’s candidacy in Human Rights Council

    • On April 18, a group of eight Vietnamese organizations published an open letter calling for United Nations members to prevent Vietnam from joining the UN Human Rights Council for the 2023-2025 term.
    • They cited Hanoi’s opposition to the resolution to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council on April 7 and its previous abstentions to condemn Moscow’s war-waged against Ukraine as the contributing reasons for their petition.
    • According to the letter, these organizations included Vietnam Human Rights Network (Mạng Lưới Nhân Quyền Việt Nam), Defend The Defenders (Tổ Chức Người Bảo Vệ Nhân Quyền), Assembly For Democracy Of Vietnam (Họp Mặt Dân Chủ), Humanistic Socialist Party (Đảng Nhân Bản Xã Hội), The Great Viet Party (Đại Việt Quốc Dân Đảng), Vietnam Democracy Federation (Lực Lượng Dân Tộc Cứu Nguy Tổ Quốc), The Independent Journalists Association of VietNam (Hội Nhà Báo Độc Lập Việt Nam), and Vietnam Democracy Radio (Đài phát thanh Đáp Lời Sông Núi).
    • The open letter also added that the systemic violations of human rights committed by the Vietnamese government and its pro-Kremlin stance consequently made Vietnam ineligible for a role in the Human Rights Council.
    • “Before seeking membership of the Council, the Vietnamese government must improve its human rights record, strictly enforce international human rights conventions on human rights, and contribute to the international community to build a peaceful and prosperous world,” the letter said.

    Vietnam expected to hold joint military training drills with Russia

    RFA:

    • Russian state media reported on April 19 that Russia and Vietnam, Moscow’s closest ally in Southeast Asia, are preparing to hold a joint military training exercise. They added that the initial planning meeting for the drills was held virtually between the leaders of Russia’s Eastern Military District and the Vietnamese army.
    • According to Russian state media, the two countries “agreed on the subject of the upcoming drills, specified the dates and venue for them” and “discussed issues of medical and logistic support, cultural and sports programs.” No other details were given.
    • The spokeswoman for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry Le Thi Thu Hang confirmed on April 21 that  Vietnam’s mutual military training agenda with Russia, which is set to be named “Continental Alliance 2022,” during a press briefing and said that these activities were meant to “foster friendship and trust.”
    • Hang reiterated that Hanoi’s consistent policy of defense cooperation with other countries was only meant to “bolster friendship, solidarity, mutual trust, and understanding, for the sake of peace, cooperation and development in the region and in the world.”
    • RFA reported that Vietnamese media had remained silent on the meeting and had not reported on the proposed military exercise. Vietnamese officials were not available for comment.
    • “This is a totally inappropriate decision on Vietnam’s part,” said Carlyle Thayer, professor emeritus at the New South Wales University in Australia, and a veteran Vietnam watcher, in an interview with RFA.
    • “The U.S. is hosting a special summit with Southeast Asian leaders in May,” Thayer said. “How will the Vietnamese leader be able to look Biden in the eye given the U.S. clear stance on the Ukrainian war and the Russian invasion?” “This is not how you deal with the world’s superpower,” he added.
    • Meanwhile, Vietnam could be hit with US sanctions over its continuing military relations with Moscow under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which was passed by the United States in 2017, writes David Hutt in The Asia Times. However, several experts noted that the chances Vietnam would get sanctioned under the CAATSA are low as the Biden administration could face a dilemma in pursuing contradictory objectives.

    Vietnam arrests former coast guard chief over “embezzlement” case

    Reuters:

    • “Vietnam’s Defense Ministry has detained a former commander of its coast guard on suspicion of embezzlement, the government said on Monday, in the latest arrest as the ruling Communist Party intensifies its long-running crackdown on graft.
    • Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Son was arrested last Wednesday along with six other senior coast guard officials for their involvement in an “embezzlement case,” the government said in a statement that did not elaborate on the alleged offense.
    • The state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper cited the Defense Ministry as saying that Son was responsible for violations committed by the coast guard between 2015 and 2020, including “financial mismanagement” and “procurement irregularities.”

    U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper calls for the upgrading of the Vietnam-United States relationship

    • During a press conference in Hanoi on April 20, U.S. Ambassador Marc Knapper said that the United States and Vietnam have deepened mutual cooperation on multiple strategic issues and that it is time for the two countries to upgrade their bilateral relationship from comprehensive to a strategic level.
    • “Upgrading the relationship with Vietnam to strategic partnership is a priority, not just for myself but the U.S. government,” Knapper said when he was asked by the local news agency VnExpress about what he sees as the priorities during his incumbency.
    • Meanwhile, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh will attend the U.S.-ASEAN summit in Washington D.C. from May 12 to 13 at the invitation of President Joe Biden, according to the confirmation from the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry.
    • Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said that Vietnam “stands ready to work with the Biden administration on further strengthening and deepening bilateral relations” with an aim to promote regional and international “peace, stability, cooperation, and development.”

    Vietnam Insight: Learn more about Vietnam

    Corruption is the Worst Enemy of the Vietnamese Army

    Fulcrum/ Le Hong Hiep/ April 22

    “The Vietnamese military is involved in a wide range of commercial activities, facilitated by its dominant role in Vietnamese politics. This sometimes causes civilian authorities to defer to military officials’ requests, including for resources and preferential treatments, which creates opportunities for corruption to thrive. The existence of military-owned businesses, both genuine ones and front companies set up to support intelligence gathering and operational purposes, also makes rent-seeking activities by corrupt individuals difficult to detect due to the blurred distinction between commercial and defence-related activities.”

    How Does Inviting Autocrats to the White House Make Asia More Free?

    The Diplomat/ John Sifton/ April 22

    “The Biden administration needs to adopt more coherent principles for supporting nations in Asia without sacrificing the promotion of human rights. A key problem in the Biden administration’s Asia rhetoric is that it too often conflates human freedoms and rights with the “freedoms” and “rights” of governments not to be coerced by other governments (i.e., by the Chinese government). When Blinken in December cited a “rules-based order” in Asia meant to “protect the right of all countries to choose their own path, free from coercion, free from intimidation,” he was not talking about human freedoms. He was dressing up “countering the Chinese government” in the language of liberty.”

    US-Vietnam Partnership Goes Beyond Strategic Competition with China

    U.S. Institute of Peace/ Nguyễn Khắc Giang/ April 19

    “U.S. rapprochement with Vietnam is more than a way to “contain” China (as if this could be done). A long-term, stable friendship should not be based solely on mutual concern about a rising regional hegemon. Washington should not only focus on economic and security partnerships but needs to support Vietnam in areas that it is lagging behind, particularly institutional reforms and the increased repression of civil society. A more democratic and open Vietnam will not only be good for the Vietnamese but a more trusted regional partner. A friendship based on shared values is much more sustainable than the one based purely on security and economic interests.”

    Nuclear moves up the list of Vietnam’s power mix

    Southeast Asia Globe/ Govi Snell/ April 18

    “The potential scarcity of electricity comes amid discussion around what will be included in Vietnam’s eighth national power development plan, or PDP8.

    Some see a turn towards nuclear energy as a long-term solution for Vietnam to meet its energy needs while reducing fossil fuels. However, building nuclear power plants in Vietnam would be an expensive and time-consuming process and public support for nuclear energy is low in the country.”

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    More from The Vietnamese Magazine. 

  • 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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  • 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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  • Pham Doan Trang in The Diplomat: Independent Journalists in Vietnam: The Clampdown Against Critics Continues

    According to Reporters without Borders (RSF), Vietnam has one of the world’s most repressive environments for journalists.  A lot of high-profile arrests were made including 2019 RSF Press Freedom Prize for Impact laureate Pham Doan Trang who was charged with “anti-state propaganda.”

    Excerpt:

    On April 24, Tran Thi Tuyet Dieu became the latest journalist to be jailed for daring to criticize Vietnam’s ruling communist party. Dieu was handed an eight year sentence for criticizing the party and advocating for democracy on social media. According to Reporters without Borders (RSF), Vietnam has one of the world’s most repressive environments for journalists, with only five countries scoring worse in the group’s latest annual report. These are difficult times for Vietnam’s independent journalists, and there is little cause for optimism.

    The year 2020 saw a spate of high-profile arrests as six independent journalists were arrested. In October 2020, the authorities arrested human rights and democracy advocate Pham Doan Trang. Trang, who received the RSF Press Freedom Prize for Impact in 2019, was arrested on the day of the 24th annual U.S.-Vietnam Human Rights Dialogue, in a blatant display of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP)’s contempt for human rights.  She was charged with publishing “propaganda” against the state, a loosely-defined term that is often used to lock-up critics of the regime.

    The arrests are part of a deteriorating situation for free expression in Vietnam, with social media and online content coming under increasing scrutiny from online censors. In January 2019, the government passed a new cybersecurity law which demanded that technology companies hand over user data and enforce censorship. In April 2020, Facebook agreed to increase censorship of critical content after the government forced the company’s servers offline and restricted traffic to the site. Vietnam may be looking to create its own version of the Great Firewall of China, where content is scrupulously monitored and criticism of the regime is almost impossible. Although Vietnam is not currently powerful enough to do this, the approach it has taken so far suggests that in the long term it may well do so if it can.

    Social media in Vietnam is extremely popular, with Facebook boasting around 66 million users, around two-thirds of the total population. Social media can be a forum for political debate, criticism, and the free exchange of political ideas, all concepts which are anathema to the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP). According to The 88 Project’s annual Human Rights report, 10 online commentators were arrested in 2020. These commentators had no links to civil society groups and were jailed solely for what they posted online.

    The government would like social media to resemble an echo chamber of official party propaganda. To this end, it has recruited an army of online activists to promote party policy, harass critics, and monitor content for dissent. One favored tactic is to mass report critical content so it is removed by Facebook for breaching community guidelines. In November 2020, Reuters reported that Vietnam had threatened to shut down Facebook, despite the increased level of censorship that Facebook had enforced on the government’s behalf since the agreement in April. The VCP knows that Facebook is unlikely to pull out of such a lucrative market, and is sure to press for even more restrictions in the future.

    These are worrying times. As leading journalists are arrested and social media becomes increasingly restricted, it is hard to remain optimistic about the future of independent journalism in Vietnam. Freedom of the press is essential to hold politicians to account, and to represent the interests of ordinary citizens. Activists and journalists have used social media to organize opposition to unpopular laws, campaign against corruption, and protest against environmental destruction. Although taking away this power from its citizens may serve the interests of the VCP, it is ordinary Vietnamese people who will suffer the consequences.

    Independent Journalists in Vietnam The Clampdown Against Critics Continues The Diplomat
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  • Luat Khoa’s Trinh Huu Long in PEN America: Interview With Vietnamese Journalist And Human Rights Lawyer Trinh Huu Long

    PEN America interviews Trinh Huu Long, who helped maintain the “Anh Ba Sam” blog after the arrests of prominent Vietnamese bloggers Nguyen Huu Vinh and Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy.

    In this interview, Trinh gives us an eye opening insight on activism and the perils that come with criticizing the government; and how traditional Vietnamese culture, particularly, patriarchy and collectivism, play an important part in shaping a repressed society.

    Trinh, is also the co-founder of Luat Khoa, an independent online magazine that discusses human rights, democracy, and rule of law in Vietnam.

    Excerpt:

    Prominent Vietnamese bloggers Nguyen Huu Vinh and Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy are now a year into their convictions, having been sentenced for “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the State, the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and/or citizens.” Talk to us about what happens to a blogger who is arrested in Vietnam.

    After bloggers Nguyen Huu Vinh and Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy were arrested, I had the privilege of becoming part of the team for his “Anh Ba Sam” blog, and to maintain the blog for a while. I have been closely following their case. In short, there is no due process for those who get arrested in political cases.

    Police will come to your house and arrest you without even declaring why you are arrested. Then you might disappear for weeks. In the case of Nguyen Huu Vinh, his family was only informed of his arrest after more than 10 days. In most cases, you will be held incommunicado without family visits or lawyers’ assistance. At the same time, the mainstream media delivers a lot of false reports on your case, saying you conducted propaganda against the state, that you destroyed the image of the country and the Communist Party, and so on.

    Your trial will come after months have passed, or in Nguyen Huu Vinh’s case, after almost two years, during which time you will remain in prison. In every case, the trials are closed to the public. Chances are, even the defendants’ family members are not allowed to enter the courtroom. International observers and international press may be allowed to watch your case on a TV screen shown in the room next door.

    Inside the courtroom, all the judges and prosecutors are Communist Party members. You and your lawyers are not allowed to talk too much. Your lawyers’ laptops and cellphones are even confiscated by the police before the show trial. Bloggers who are arrested are often sentenced to years of imprisonment; some have been sentenced to 12–16 years. Sometimes your family can visit you in prison; sometimes they are not allowed, and often no one will tell them the reasons for the absence of visitation.

    What will keep citizen journalists blogging when the risk of being imprisoned for their views is so high?

    When you truly believe in something, it becomes part of you, and it is almost impossible for you to act like you don’t know anything.

    Citizen journalists must write and raise their voices because it is just how they are, and they can’t live differently. In the end, we all love our country and our people, and we also care about those whose rights are being violated in other countries. Love will eventually find ways to raise its voice. And we accept whatever the consequences may be. What also motivates us is that we are optimistic that tomorrow will be better. And it is true.

    It’s interesting that you said family and friends and Vietnamese culture as a whole do not encourage writers and bloggers to practice free expression. In a way, this is understandable because of its inherent danger. As a Vietnamese American, I’m curious about how much of our self-oppression is really shaped by our culture, as you said, or by fear. Can you speak more about how Vietnamese culture might discourage activism?

    To me, this is the main, the biggest, and the key problem in Vietnam. When we talk about freedom and democracy, we usually talk about the relation between citizens and the government. But the nature of this relationship is based on the country’s culture. What shapes citizens’ attitudes and behaviors toward the government and vice versa? Whether you are a citizen or a government official, you are still Vietnamese, and you are born into that culture.

    Vietnam is a society based on patriarchy and collectivism. That means, you must listen to your parents, you must respect elders, you must obey your family’s and community’s rules whether you agree with them or not, and regardless of whether the rules make any sense.

    In your family, your father is the supreme leader. He is the law. In your society, your government is the supreme leader. They are the law. So what you can see here is that the society is actually just a larger version of the family.

    Living under a dictatorship, people tend to obey the government’s rules without questioning their legitimacy and rationality. Resistance is not encouraged as a matter of course. Your parents understand that, and they want you to also keep silent and avoid opposing the government. If one day you realize something is wrong and start talking about it, the government will not be the one who comes first to confront you. Your father, your mother, your brothers and sisters, your friends will. People tend to disrespect your rights, and they scold you for being different.

    Many people say it is the communist culture, blaming the Communist Party for that. But I don’t think that is entirely true. The way we treat each other today is not learned behavior we picked up from the Communists. Rather, it is rooted deeply in our history as a closed society, long before the Communist Party was established in 1930.

    Being born into that culture, you follow and act like your parents, you treat others the same way that they treat you. And if you become a government leader, in turn, you will act like a dictator. The dictator in the government is pretty much the same as the dictator in the family.

    So to me, that’s the main problem. My theory is, as long as we still have dictators in families, we will have dictators in the government. If it is not the Communists, it will be some other kind of dictatorship.

    It is significant to note that not all Vietnamese families are like that. I know many, especially young families, are much more progressive and liberal. The society is slowly opening up. People’s mind-sets are also changing. I am very lucky that my parents have respected and loved me as much as they could, though I know they have been struggling a lot to overcome not only social prejudices but also their personal prejudices and fears.

    You are the editor of Luat Khoa, a news website about law and criminal justice in Vietnam and abroad. Can you tell us what prompted you to launch Luat Khoa? What are some of the challenges you’ve had to face?

    I came up with the idea of Luat Khoa when I was in law school in Hanoi, back in 2007. I just wanted people to share knowledge and help each other to achieve a higher level of legal understanding. But then, after I participated in the anti-China protest movement in 2011, I realized very clearly that human rights and the rule of law in Vietnam were in a crisis, and I wanted to fix it. I then wrote a lot of articles for the mainstream media about law, human rights, and politics with the hope that there would be more people understanding what I had understood.

    However, I was not satisfied with those articles because of the government’s censorship and the newspapers’ self-censorship. I realized that I had to do it myself, with my own media outlet. And by the end of 2014, along with three other activists, I founded Luat Khoa, and since then, we have been functioning as a professional and independent law magazine. We have freed ourselves from every kind of censorship.

    Of course, there is a price for this. A lot of blog posts have been written against us by pro-government bloggers, accusing us of being affiliated with a “terrorist” political party and betraying the country. The same thing has happened with a lot of activists, including prisoners of conscience.

    How did you deal with those accusations?

    This is about a very fashionable issue: how to deal with fake news. To the accusations of being affiliated with a “terrorist” political party, we confronted them immediately. Learning from other organizations’ experiences, we did not ignore the rumor but knocked it down with facts right at the onset.

    We released a statement clarifying that we were an independent organization and not a part of any political organizations. We also repeated this message at other events. The rumor did not stop spreading, because this rumor was an intentional effort by “some people,” but we at least gained a lot more trust from ordinary readers.

    The reason why people trust us, rather than the rumors about us, is that our approach and language are hugely different from that of a political party. We deliver multidimensional reports, analysis, and commentaries in a scientific way, not a political way. We provide knowledge and constructive contents. This is also why, despite our being accused by the Internet trolls of betraying the country, I believe many people don’t think of us in such a way.

    Is there any type of self-censorship that you apply to your blog at Luat Khoa?

    As I said, we don’t censor anything. We act as if we have all our human rights guaranteed within Vietnam, and that we just need to exercise them. I like the campaign slogan of Dr. Nguyen Quang A, a leading activist in my country: “Your Right! Use It!”

    We write about pluralism, democracy, dictatorship, human rights violations, political trials, censorship, and so on. However, we impose our own standards and strive to be professional, scientific, and rational. We don’t use hate speech. We don’t believe that problems will be solved by hurting each other, including through language. Hate speech, from any side, is therefore totally banned from our magazine. We also “censor” ourselves from using fake news and unconfirmed information. Many contributors have sent us their articles without any references or sources of information used in their writings; we normally do not find these articles meet our standards. Even if they do have references, we still consider very carefully the credibility of their sources.

    But overall, with these guidelines in mind, we invite everyone to contribute to Luat Khoa.

    What is your long-term hope for the site?

    In my vision, Luat Khoa is going to be one of the major newspapers in Vietnam that promotes human rights, the rule of law, and democracy.

    I hope that in 20 years, those who read Luat Khoa today, including law students, will become law professors, lawyers, judges, politicians, activists, and journalists, and in turn, they will develop the legal framework and legal culture in Vietnam toward the values of human rights, rule of law, and democracy.

    Thank you so much, Long. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

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    Interview with Vietnamese Journalist and Human Rights Lawyer Trinh Huu Long PEN America
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