Vietnam bloggers battle tightening censorship
The following excerpt was taken from Yahoo News. For the full article, click here.
When riot police broke up a recent protest over a forced eviction, Vietnam's bloggers were ready -- hidden in nearby trees, they documented the entire incident and quickly posted videos and photos online.
Their shaky images spread like wildfire on Facebook, in a sign of growing online defiance in Vietnam, in the face of efforts by authorities to rein in the country's Internet community.
"They follow me, they keep track of what I am writing, they keep track of all dissident bloggers. Anything they can do to harass us, they do," said blogger Nguyen Thi Dung, one of several bloggers who publicised the April 24 Hung Yen unrest on a variety of websites.
"They have many people browsing the net, reporting things they don't like, getting them taken down. It is a perfect copy of what the Chinese are doing on the Internet," she told AFP, asking that her name be changed for her safety.
Authoritarian Vietnam, classed an "enemy of the Internet" by Reporters Without Borders, is drafting a new decree on online content in a bid to clamp down on the country's increasingly bold blogosphere.
The 60-article draft decree -- a translated copy of which was obtained by AFP -- bans "abusing the Internet" to oppose the government.
It would force bloggers to post real names and contact details, make news websites obtain government approval to publish, and compel site administrators to report any banned online activity to authorities.
The decree also seeks to make foreign companies that provide online services in Vietnam -- like Facebook and Google -- cooperate with the government and could force them to locate data centres and offices in the country.
To read the full article, click here.
