Vietnamese Netizens Are Getting Bolder Online, Despite Tough Laws · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Image from Viet Tan
Despite serious restrictions on free expression in Vietnam, a growing number of citizens are actively using online networks to express their views on social and political issues.
Vietnam has a population of 93 million and an Internet user base of almost 40 million. There are more than 30 million active Facebook users, an impressive jump since 2012, when the number was only 8.5 million. Furthermore, the popular social networking site has been intermittently blocked in Vietnam in recent years.
A recent report by Viet Tan, a pro-democracy political party led by Vietnamese citizens in and outside of the country, elaborates on the issue. Although the government has passed multiple laws intended to control Internet use and content, “social media is playing the role of a de-facto independent media with far reaching socio-political implications,” the group says. They have also observed that “online platforms provide a public town square and virtual civil society,” especially since freedom of assembly is curtailed in the country.
Thanks to social media it has become possible and even trendsetting to publicly question the Communist Party’s legitimacy.
As Vietnam pushes towards greater connectivity with an online populace showing greater willingness to exercise their right to connect, censorship will be more difficult for the government to accomplish.
Viet Tan presented its study of Vietnam's social media landscape during the human rights and technology conference RightsCon in Manila last month.
Viet Tan noted that a search on YouTube for the words “cong an danh nguoi” (police brutality) yields 148,000 results. Many also have shared photos with the hashtag “I don't like the Communist Party of Vietnam” (Toi khong thich dang cong san Viet Nam). A new blog called “Portraits of Power” (Chan Dung Quyen Luc) has been exposing the dirty secrets of some high-ranking officials.
A recent campaign opposing the cutting down of 6,700 trees in Hanoi gathered popular support, forcing authorities to suspend the plan.
Huong Le Thu, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, also noticed the growing defiance among some netizens. He wrote on New Mandala, an online journal focusing on Southeast Asia:
An indicator of change is that people are no longer afraid of self-identification when posting anti-regime banners, uploading their photos and revealing their online identities.
An Internet cafe in Vietnam. Flickr photo by Kent Goldman (CC License)
While it is true that Vietnam is blocking numerous websites, the report estimates that 60 percent of Internet users are using Virtual Private Networks or proxy servers to access restricted content. Viet Tan interprets this as proof that netizens are already “weary of the government’s controls.”
Some Vietnamese officials recognize the difficulty of policing the web. Even the prime minister commented last January that “it is impossible to ban or prevent people from posting information on the Internet.”
But that doesn’t mean Internet policies have been relaxed. On a daily basis, Vietnamese Internet users must navigate restrictive regulations for social media platforms and policies such as Decree 72, which attempts to prohibit news aggregation and sharing on social media. Another law commonly used to persecute online speakers is Article 258 of the Criminal Code, which punishes the misuse of “democratic freedoms to attack state interests and the legitimate rights and interests of collectives and individuals.”
The use of ‘opinion-shapers’ or government-sponsored trolls to undermine the work of activists prove that there are other ways of restricting free expression in the country. Viet Tan told Global Voices in an email interview that ‘opinion-shapers’ are still active today:
The use of opinion shapers continues to be a problem. Also, a lot of activists have had their Facebook accounts hacked into and passwords stolen. It’s probably impossible now for the government to block FB but they will certainly try to undermine its effectiveness and desirability.
Vietnam also continues to harass and arrest prominent bloggers, tactics that “intimidate the larger online community against discussing politically sensitive content.” Viet Tan pointed out that this remains “the greatest challenge facing the Vietnamese online community.” There are 16 journalists and bloggers in Vietnam who are still in detention.
Viet Tan said that aside from campaigning for the release of dissident writers, the international community can “speak out against Western companies that supply filtering technologies to the Vietnamese state and urge Western technology companies not to collude with the censors.”
Whether the Communist Party likes it or not, Vietnam’s media landscape is changing. Hopefully, critical voices will be allowed to flourish in both offline and online spaces.