Thayer Vietnam: Crackdown On Bloggers

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Background Briefing: Crackdown on Bloggers Carlyle A. Thayer September 2, 2009

[client name suppressed] August 31, 2009: Question: What is your assessment of last week's arrest of blogger Nguoi Buon Gio and blog Osin's resigning from his paper? Answer: The Vietnam Communist Party and its security apparatus cannot tolerate matters they do not control. Territorial surveillance, bloc wardens and informers work when suspects are territorially based. But cyberspace represents a more formidable challenge because anonymous citizens can post their views and exchange ideas with others both inside and outside Vietnam. Blog sites have become extremely popular in Vietnam to the general public but not to security authorities. Blogs represent perhaps the last frontier of freedom. The latest arrest of blogger, Bui Thanh Hieu, and the dismissal of blogger Huy Duc from his job at Thiep Thi newspaper, signal that the Star Wars equivalent of storm troopers have made further advances into cyberspace. Rounding up cyber dissidents, however, will not resolve the issues they are writing about such as Chinese assertiveness in the Eastern Sea and Vietnam’s relations with a dominant Middle Kingdom. [client name suppressed] September 2, 2009” Question: You have no doubt heard about the recent arrest of Pham Doan Trang, and also another blogger in Saigon, Sphynx. Yes they're all bloggers. Now I think its quite tempting to talk about a concerted effort to repress freedom of expression, yet I am instinctively inclined to look at the arrests as new campaign to round up dissidents and activists, rather than mere bloggers. I have the impression that this all is connected to the major anti-state criminal case that the authorities are to bring to light. Your comment? Answer: The current wave of arrests reflects a concerted drive to round up political dissidents and activists. But blog sites have become a relatively new venue to air criticism as distinct from the internet. And there is the added combination that bloggers are raising political issues (bauxite and relations with China) which are distinct from calls for freedom of expression, association and democracy etc. The focus on bloggers represents a new curtailment of freedom of expression. Some of the bloggers have political connections but others are operating quite independently of any identifiable pro-democracy movement. I would still argue that a decision has been made, most likely at Politburo level, to reassert state control over cyberspace. I am not aware of an impending major anti-state criminal case that is somehow related to the crackdown just discussed. It depends on what you mean by “criminal case”. If it is a case of high-level corruption or bribery then that is the usual sense of criminal. But the Vietnamese Penal Code criminalizes freedom of expression. There is nothing secret about the regime’s plans to try a number of those arrested and make it a big national security case. If this occurs then one has to ask who benefits? What explains the timing?

2 My initial reaction is that it is a drive by party conservatives to seize the initiative in a first shot at shaping the agenda and personnel changes for the next party congress. The mid-year party plenum set the party congress machinery in motion. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has been politically weakened by the bauxite affair due to his high profile and the manner in which he managed this issue. The conservatives have pre-empted any attempt to push political liberalization by linking advocacy of democracy with national security.