Tuesday, October 03, 2017

Vietnam grapples with a wild and wooly web...

Where is Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang? That was the question the country’s social media users were consumed with in recent weeks.

Online gossipers speculated Quang was either ill, poisoned by the Chinese or the victim of an intra-Communist Party political power struggle, along with other less-conceivable conspiracy theories.

Independent political blogs and popular social media accounts showed that nearly everyone had an opinion on the sensitive matter and were eager to express it.

Perhaps, then, it was only natural that a week before Quang finally made his reappearance in late August his office published a letter he supposedly drafted calling for more stringent internet controls.

Tighter rules are needed, he wrote, to censor “news sites and blogs with bad and dangerous content” – though, his letter made it clear politics was at hand. Tougher controls are required to prosecute those who “undermined the prestige of the leaders of the party and the state,” he stated. Full story...

Related posts:
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  2. Vietnam writer Nguyen Quang Lap 'arrested over blog'
  3. Vietnam jails blogger for critical posts...
  4. Internet freedom on decline worldwide as governments tighten grip...
  5. Vietnam just banned doing pretty much anything online...
  6. A starving blogger's Vietnam crusade...
  7. Vietnam to ban sharing of news stories on social media...
  8. Vietnam arrests third blogger in less than a month in intensifying crackdown
  9. Vietnamese anti-corruption bloggers jailed...
  10. Vietnamese dissident bloggers unfazed by 20-year jail threats by the State...

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