The Vietnamese authorities’ continuing attack on dissent, free speech and a free Internet is exemplified by the trumped up tax evasion approval by a Hanoi appeals court earlier this month that sent the human rights lawyer and blogger Le Quoc Quan to jail for 30 months.
Hundreds of supporters wearing demonstrated outside the court for Quan, convicted last October by a lower court. He had been in detention since December 2012. A European Union delegation, representatives from the United States and Canadian governments and a small group of journalists were present at the trial.
In fact, the government has a complex, love-hate relationship with the Internet, complicated by the fact that it believed erroneously that control would be easy and that circumventing even basic blocks would be beyond the ability of many. That was news to the country’s internet users, who have been energetically getting around programs designed to keep them in their place.
Though classified as an “enemy of the Internet” by Reporters Without Borders for its blocking of websites and arrests of bloggers and journalists, Vietnam’s Communist government has done an awful lot to ensure access. The country has long valued literacy and learning and according to Professor Carlyle Thayer at the Australian Defense Force Academy, the government believed that the “knowledge era” was key to the nation’s economic development. Full story...
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Hundreds of supporters wearing demonstrated outside the court for Quan, convicted last October by a lower court. He had been in detention since December 2012. A European Union delegation, representatives from the United States and Canadian governments and a small group of journalists were present at the trial.
In fact, the government has a complex, love-hate relationship with the Internet, complicated by the fact that it believed erroneously that control would be easy and that circumventing even basic blocks would be beyond the ability of many. That was news to the country’s internet users, who have been energetically getting around programs designed to keep them in their place.
Though classified as an “enemy of the Internet” by Reporters Without Borders for its blocking of websites and arrests of bloggers and journalists, Vietnam’s Communist government has done an awful lot to ensure access. The country has long valued literacy and learning and according to Professor Carlyle Thayer at the Australian Defense Force Academy, the government believed that the “knowledge era” was key to the nation’s economic development. Full story...
Related posts:
- Vietnam just banned doing pretty much anything online...
- A starving blogger's Vietnam crusade...
- Vietnam to ban sharing of news stories on social media...
- Vietnam arrests third blogger in less than a month in intensifying crackdown
- Vietnamese anti-corruption bloggers jailed...
- Vietnamese dissident bloggers unfazed by 20-year jail threats by the State...
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