The Vietnamese government is intensifying a crackdown on critical voices before the state funeral of Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong who died last week. Authorities have fined residents for discussing Trong’s death on social media and asked Facebook to block dissenting posts.
On July 19, shortly after state media reported Trong’s death after 13 years in Vietnam’s top government job, former prisoner of conscience Pham Thanh Nghien posted a Facebook story titled “Why is NPT exempted from being judged right now and instead we must wait for history’s judgment?”
“No need to wait for history, Vietnamese people should have the right to judge him straight away,” wrote Nghien, who lives in exile in the U.S. with her family. A day earlier, she posted a commentary discussing President To Lam taking over the general secretary role if Trong died and recalling an incident in which Lam, then minister of public security, was photographed eating gold-coated steak at an upscale restaurant in London in 2021.
On July 22, she received a Facebook notification in both English and Vietnamese regarding the two posts.
“Your post is unavailable in Vietnam. [Because of] a legal request from the Vietnam Ministry of Information and Communications (MOIC), we have to restrict access to your post,” Facebook said.
Explaining the decision, the Meta subsidiary said that it had “evaluated legal requests before taking action upon legal requests or requests by governments” and “taken into consideration human rights impacts.”
Facebook suggested Nghien contact the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications if she had any questions.
The former political prisoner said Facebook had blocked interactions, removed her stories, and even shut down her account many times over the years. She sometimes received company notifications about their action but this time, she said, Meta had not provided a concrete and clear explanation regarding the communication ministry’s intervention.
Nghien, who served four years in prison for protesting against China’s claim to islands in the South China Sea, accused Facebook, which used to be a platform where many Vietnamese raised dissenting voices, of trading human rights for profits.
“Facebook has already surrendered,” she told Radio Free Asia.” They are pursuing profits and abandoning their commitment to ensure freedom of speech while doing business in Vietnam. It appears that they are cooperating or even compromising with the Communist Party of Vietnam in censoring Facebook accounts of political dissidents and posts with content disliked by the Vietnamese government.”
RFA emailed the MOIC to verify whether it had asked Facebook to block Nghien's articles in Vietnam but did not receive any responses at time of publication.
RFA also contacted Facebook to verify that it had restricted access to Nghien’s posts in response to Vietnamese government requests but did not receive an immediate response.
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Journalist Le Trung Khoa, who lives in Germany, said he received similar notifications from Facebook. The owner of the Thoibao.de website, which publishes articles critical of the Vietnamese government, said on Tuesday Facebook notified him that his stories about Nguyen Phu Trong were not available in Vietnam.
“This morning, I received notification from Facebook that four of my stories were not available in Vietnam upon MOIC request,” he said. “This is new, as Facebook used to quietly block posts in Vietnam without any notifications for the past year.”
California-based Facebook said in a transparency report, that from July 2023 to December 2023, it restricted access in Vietnam to more than 2,300 items in response to reports from the MOIC, the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information and the Ministry of Public Security for allegedly violating local laws on proving information that distorts, slanders, or insults the reputation of an organization or the honor and dignity of an individual under Article 5.1 (D) Decree no. 72/2013/ND-CP. The remaining items were restricted for alleged violations of other Vietnamese laws.
Facebookers fined, even beaten
Vietnamese authorities also cracked down on domestic dissenters who turned to social media to criticize what Trong had done or failed to do during his tenure.
State media cited Ho Chi Minh City police as saying that after Trong’s death, a number of individuals used social media to post information that was “fabricated, distorting, attacking, and undermining the great national unity, lowering the prestige of the Party and State.”
State media also reported that on July 20 and 21 Ho Chi Minh City police had fined three people VND7.5 million (US$300) each for posting material about Trong, ordering them to pledge not to repeat the violations.
“Hanoi is trying to frame Trong as a ‘new Uncle Ho’ to repolish old-fashioned values of the Communist Party,” said a Hanoi-based political commentator who requested anonymity, referring to revolutionary leader and former president Ho Chi Minh.
“The efforts to clarify Trong’s [legacy] and criticize the Communist Party now become a felony and are heavily suppressed."
An activist from Ho Chi Minh City, who also wanted to remain anonymous for security reasons, told RFA that the police had summoned him to discuss a post on his Facebook page in which he expressed his disagreement with a government “order” asking the whole country to mourn Trong.
He said police beat him and forced him to acknowledge that the Facebook account and post were his. However, he refused to do so, or to sign any documents. He said that before freeing him, police told him that they would summon him again in the course of their work on the case..
Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.