As previously reported, Vietnam has announced a new draft decree aimed to force foreign internet
companies (particularly Google and Facebook, according to government officials)
to open local offices in Vietnam, pay state tax, censor user content and
provide private user information to the government. The decree will be voted on
in June.
Yesterday I spoke to a rep from Google’s
Singapore office who wished to alleviate growing concerns over the decree. She
said that Google reps had indeed flown to Vietnam a year ago to discuss issues
of concern. However, she said that Google only just learned about the new
Decree two weeks ago (along with the rest of us), so obviously the Decree was
not a point of discussion at their previous meeting. Thus, she said, statements
in Vietnam state media about Google agreeing to the demands in the decree were
merely speculations of local Vietnamese company owners, and were unfounded.
The Google rep went on to say that Google’s
impression is that the Vietnam government has not reached a consensus on the
issues outlined in the decree (as described by the Vietnamese media), and that these
details are still under discussion within the government. At this time, she
told me, Google is taking a ‘wait and see’ approach. She assured me that
whatever Google might do in the future—it would do so with complete transparency
to the public.
So where does this leave us?
In the
meantime, events of the last week have continued to devolve.
On April 12, in the National Assembly
Standing Committee Meeting, officials resolved to tighten restriction on
unlicensed print publishing, stating that “Many cases of illegal printing have
had a negative impact on the country's political and social development.”
On April 18, Hanoi placed new restrictions
on event organizers and stage performers, clamping down on all unlicensed
performances and departures from government-approved scripts. Already the law
requires prior government approval of all schedules, speeches, song lists and
lyrics, etc. for public events.
In addition to this the Vietnam government
continues to arrest bloggers and journalists. On Monday, the Vietnam government
charged three bloggers; Nguyen Van Hai, Phan Thanh Hai and Ta Phong Tan with
“propaganda against the state,” a charge that caries up to 20 years in prison.
The bloggers belong to the “Free Journalists Club,” a rare, independent media
organization outlawed by the government. Nguyen Hoang Hai (also known as Dieu
Cay), is also a member of the group and has been in prison since 2008. His
precise location and condition is currently unknown. The imprisoned journalists
are just the latest of dozens of cases where bloggers have been sent to prison
and re-education camps, some without even a mock trial.
So what will happen in June?
The Ministry of Information’s new
‘Anti-Google & Facebook Decree” will be passed into law in June. The Vietnam
government has nothing to lose by passing the law. Once signed, then it will be left to the Ministry of Information to figure out the
implementation later.
The Facebook ban will become official. The
government began blocking Facebook in late 2009 after issuing a secret memo to
ISPs, which was leaked to the public just prior to its implementation. However,
there was never an ‘official,’ public Facebook ban. Now there will be, and if
the government possesses a more effective mechanism to block Facebook, it will
use it.
Vietnam will not block Google Search. Both
the government and commercial interests depend on Google Search as much as the rest of
us. They won’t go this far, yet.
Vietnam will block secondary Google
services. As much as some of us may like YouTube, Google+, Blogger or other
Google services, these are neither important to the function of the government,
nor to the Vietnam economy. Some or all of these services will be blocked, particularly
due to content hosted which is objectionable to the communist government. This
will not be the first time either. The government has blocked Google News Search
in the past, and selectively blocks Google Blogger accounts already.
After this happens, the next question is,
what will Google and Facebook do about it, if anything at all?