By Thanh Lam, Rabble
So here’s the deal: the future of the open Internet is on the line. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an international trade deal involving 12 Pacific Rim countries, threatens to make the Internet we know and love more expensive, censored, and policed. The TPP has huge implications for all of us — but let’s zoom in on one of the countries taking part to get an idea of the impact.
Customers use wireless devices at a coffee shop in downtown Hanoi on November 28, 2013. Vietnam has intensified a crackdown on online dissent with a new decree that threatens fines of several thousand dollars for anybody criticising the government on Facebook. (Photo: HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images)
Vietnam, a participating TPP country, has a population of nearly 89 million. Over 30 million of them are Internet users. That’s 39% of the population (according to the World Bank). For what many would deem a “developing country,” that’s more than a third of the population.
The Internet wasn’t established in Vietnam until the 1990s when, after much deliberation, the government finally gave its consent. Internet usage rates increased exponentially, but not without extensive restrictions on Internet freedom. Blocking and filtering content have long been a part of Vietnam’s Internet regulation practices, but the explosion of social media was unexpected, giving rise to unprecedented ways for citizens to connect and, more importantly, organize. Social networking sites such as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook allowed activists, journalists and everyday citizens to find solidarity with one another, giving them the courage to speak out against the government’s corrupt practices.
The detention of anti-government journalists, both Vietnamese and foreign, has garnered the attention of international rights groups and institutions. The United Nations, Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International, have condemned these actions, but to no avail. In fact, just this past year, the Vietnamese government passed an even more repressive law — Decree 72 — known formally as the Decree on Management, Provision, and Use of Internet Services and Information Content Online.
This legislation allows for increased monitoring and surveillance of citizens’ messages to one another. It makes it illegal to discuss any content outside of what is considered “private information,” meaning that any discussion of politics or social commentary of any kind is punishable by imprisonment. While the government has claimed that the decree is a strategy against piracy, the restrictive definition on what is considered allowable content, as well as the punitive measures, would force even the most skeptical critic to agree that Decree 72 is an unabashed attempt at stifling freedom of expression.
The main irony is that since Vietnam is a TPP member, other nations like the United States are using this trade deal to leverage Vietnamese officials to release political prisoners. The funny thing is that the TPP’s own censorship goals are eerily similar to the ones in Vietnam’s Decree 72.
Read the full article by Thanh Lam from Rabble.
