http://www.indexonline.org/indexindex/20020819_vietnam.shtml Vietnam: Another online critic jailed. Vietnamese Internet essayist Le Chi Quang is shortly expected to go on trial on national security charges, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Quang was arrested and jailed on February 21 for writing articles that criticised Vietnam's border agreements with China. Officials from the Prosecutor's Office informed Quang's mother that her son would be tried soon under Article 88 of the Criminal Code, which bans the distribution of information that opposes the government, reported the CPJ. The exact date of the trial is unknown. The article, titled "Beware of Imperialist China," had been widely distributed on the Internet and Quang's arrest coincided with a visit to Vietnam by Chinese president Jiang Zemin. Writers and intellectuals in Vietnam increasingly use the Internet to circulate news and opinion that is banned from the tightly controlled domestic press. In response, the government has recently escalated efforts to maintain strict control over online information. Another writer, Pham Hong Son, is also being held in B14 prison for distributing information online. Son was arrested on March 27 after translating into Vietnamese and posting online an article titled "What is Democracy?," which had originally been posted on the U.S. State Department's Web site. On August 7, authorities shut down a domestic Web site (www.TTVNonline.com) where viewers had posted articles on sensitive political topics, including the border agreements with China and official corruption, according to international news reports relayed by the CPJ. The Web site, which was created in December 2000, received about 260,000 hits every day. Vietnam's government has recently sought to toughen its control over access to information, as the country opens up economically to the outside world. Increasing numbers of people use the Internet and are able to see sharp differences between Vietnamese and foreign news reports, particularly of events in Vietnam. According to the Vietnam Economic Times newspaper as reported by Associated Press the country now has 4,000 public Internet cafes. The Ministry of Culture and Information noted in June that "no authorities have been responsible for monitoring the shops after their owners receive licenses, resulting in abuses". Internet service providers in Vietnam are held responsible for filtering undesirable Web sites, but the culture ministry said it was difficult to do so because of the large number of sites. In its report, it said Internet cafe owners should be required to monitor customers to ensure they do not misuse the Internet.. CPJ report via IFEX Vietnam's telecoms industry ambitions. Guardian report on web cafe crackdowns in Saigon. Tehelka hunger striker... India: Tehelka.com reporter on hunger strike. One of the journalists behind the exposure of one of India's biggest political scandals in years has gone on hunger strike in protest at his arrested on August 7 on charges of assaulting a federal investigator. Aniruddha Bahal, who works as Investigations Editor for the news and entertainment Web site Tehelka.com, and his colleagues believe that the arrests are part of a deliberate strategy of the government to target their website. International activists agree. "The arrest of two of the website's journalists in the past month constitutes a further stage in the harassment of this independent press site. We ask that you have this intimidation brought to an end and that you drop the legal action against these journalists," said Reporters sans Frontieres secretary-general Robert Ménard in a letter to Interior Minister Lal Krishna Advani, Tehelka.com commentator Parsa Venkateshwar Rao said the Vajpayee government was operating in a way that recalled the brutal 'Emergency' period of military rule in India under Indira Gandhi. "There is both anger and apprehension in a large section of media that the BJP is intent on targeting Press freedoms," he wrote. Bahal was one a team of Tehelka reporters who secretly filmed defense officials accepting bribes to push through a fictitious defense equipment deal. The scandal was the first major crisis faced by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government, and led to the resignation of the defence minister and the dismissal of the president of the ruling party. There is also continued concern about the continued detention of Iftikhar Geelani, the Delhi bureau chief of the Kashmir Times, who was arrested in June on charges of violating the Official Secrets Act. So far the police have been unwilling or unable to relase deatils of the evidence against him. AP report via Editor & Publisher magazine. Tehelka.com website and profile of Aniruddha Bahal. Media angry over BJP government targeting Tehelka. Both stories and more from the rsf site with cohones... http://www.indexonline.org/indexindex/20020809_india.shtml