"Beware of Imperialist China" and Vietnam.

Matthew X profrv at nex.net.au
Sun May 9 06:24:55 PDT 1999


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





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