By An Nguyen, RFA
Bloggers across Vietnam launched an online campaign Tuesday demanding that their authoritarian government keep the people closely informed about national and foreign policies, including its dealings with giant neighbor China whose territorial disputes with Hanoi have led to riots and a sharp deterioration in bilateral relations.
Vietnamese bloggers display signs demanding government transparency in a “We Want to Know” campaign, Sept. 2, 2014. Photo courtesy of the Network of Vietnamese Bloggers.
Vietnamese activists have become increasingly vocal over what they call China’s aggression in the disputed South China Sea and Hanoi’s reluctance to take a stronger stand against its northern neighbor.
The “We Want to Know” campaign was launched by a Vietnamese bloggers’ group early Tuesday and quickly spread on the Internet through Facebook and other social media sites across the one-party communist state, Haiphong-based blogger Pham Thanh Nghien told RFA’s Vietnamese Service.
“At 12:00 a.m. last night, Vietnam time, the Network of Vietnamese Bloggers began the campaign ‘We Want to Know,’” said Nghien, who was freed from prison in September 2012 after her online writings earned her a four-year term behind bars.
“Our network believes that free access to information helps people exercise their rights as citizens of the country,” she said.
“Today, I say ‘I want to know’—and I have the right to know—because society cannot develop if people don’t know about the policies that govern their lives, especially policies that affect the survival of their country.”
‘Aggressive moves’
Although the campaign asserts the right of Vietnamese citizens to access information “in all fields”—including education, the environment, and health—the focus of the bloggers was on Hanoi’s actions in its long-running row with China on overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea.
“The people of Vietnam often are caught unprepared by China’s aggressive moves, and confounded by information released by the Chinese government,” the Network of Vietnamese Bloggers said in an online statement outlining the objectives of the “We Want to Know” campaign.
“Meanwhile, the Vietnamese regime represses anyone who wishes transparency, and tries to shed light upon this existing ‘black hole’ and seeks the truth of what has happened and is happening,” the group said.
Of particular concern was China’s deployment in May this year of an oil rig, HD-981, to waters off the Vietnamese coast claimed by both countries, which prompted a storm of anti-China protests in Vietnam.
Hanoi initially allowed the protests in a rare move widely seen as a way to amplify state anger against Beijing, but the government backpedaled after protests turned bloody, with riots targeting Chinese business interests. Beijing says four Chinese citizens were killed in the unrest.
When China—to support its claim over disputed territory—released the contents of a 1958 diplomatic note signed by then Vietnamese prime minister Pham Van Dong, apparently acknowledging Chinese sovereignty over the disputed area, the Vietnamese people were “astounded,” the statement by the Network of Vietnamese Bloggers said.
Beijing withdrew the rig in July, citing bad weather and the completion of exploratory work.
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