Communist Party
Steps on Already Stifled Newspapers
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Jan 27, 2011 (IPS) - A week after Vietnam’s
ruling Communist Party ended its pivotal congress of the country’s political
elite, there is little evidence in the state-controlled media of a possible
return to the openness that once saw high-profile corruption scandals exposed in
print here.
"This is the way it is going to be," a senior Vietnamese
journalist told IPS on condition of anonymity, pointing to the staid diet of
news filling the pages in the Southeast Asian nation, home to an estimated 700
newspapers and magazines. "The message from the congress to journalists was very
clear."
"Nobody will want to upset the ruling party," he added.
"They know the price if they dare."
Such fear emerged at the beginning of the Eleventh National
Congress, when Dinh The Huynh, the editor-in-chief of ‘Nhan Dan’, the Communist
Party’s official news outlet, joined other leaders of the party hierarchy to
stamp out arguments calling for "all forms of pluralism".
It amplified what the Vietnamese had learnt on the eve of
the Congress, which ran from Jan. 12 to 19. At that time Prime Minister Nguyen
Tan Dung issued an executive decree that outlawed fundamental features that are
the stock in trade of journalists pursuing investigative stories: unnamed
confidential sources.
The 44-page decree, which comes into force Feb. 25,
"outlines new monetary penalties for journalists who refuse to divulge their
news sources or publish articles under pseudonyms," noted the Committee to
Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based global media rights watchdog, soon
after. "[The new decree] supersedes any similar decrees issued in the past," CPJ
added.
The penalty of 2,000 dollars would be levied against
journalists who publish articles that are "not in the interest of the people",
reveal "state secrets", or expose "non-authorised information".
"This new decree aims to increase government control over
Vietnam’s already over-regulated and highly suppressed media," says Shawn
Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. "The language of the decree
is overly broad and represents the government’s latest use of rule by law
justifications to limit press freedom."
The emergence of Nguyen Phu Trong - the new general
secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) - as the most powerful
political figure in the country also served as a reminder that journalists in
the country are not defenders of the right to free expression. Trong is a former
editor of the ‘Communist Review’, a CPV journal.
Trong was chosen as the party boss on the last day of the
secretive congress, which was attended by 1,400 delegates representing the
party’s 3.6 million members. He was a compromise candidate to bridge the
differences between the premier, Dung, and leading party member Truong Tan Sang,
who was appointed president.
"Trong is considered as pro-Chinese and orthodox. He is a
hard-line Marxist ideologue," Vo Tran Nhat, executive secretary of Action for
Democracy in Vietnam, a Paris-based group of Vietnamese political exiles, told
IPS. "In spite of the unanimity proclaimed during the Congress, Trong and other
members of the Politburo have been criticised widely."
"There were several petitions denouncing him," added Nhat.
"Last year in preparation for the congress, 19 eminent military and CPV veterans
signed an important petition to the politburo… accusing four CPV leaders
[including Trong] of having favoured corruption, nepotism and the abuse of
power."
The latest crackdown on the press comes on the heels of
equally repressive measures Hanoi has imposed on Internet activity, which had
served as an outlet - through blogs, websites and social networking sites - for
Vietnamese citizens to exchange information and criticise government corruption.
Vietnam’s jails not only hold 17 ‘netizens’ for expressing
their views online, but at least two journalists have been imprisoned.
The jailing of the two journalists occurred during a wave
of repression targeting the press in 2008. At that time, "252 journalists were
sanctioned, 15 journalists had their press cards withdrawn, six journalists were
prosecuted and two were imprisoned," states the Vietnam Committee on Human
Rights, a Paris-based rights lobby, in a 2010 report.
The crackdown followed a 2006 media expose of corruption
involving high- ranking party officials at the transport ministry. The officials
who belonged to Project Management Unit 18 (PMU-18) had reportedly "used
millions of dollars to gamble on football matches".
The sentencing of the two journalists who exposed the
scandal marked an about turn by Hanoi, which had since its Sixth National
Congress in 1986 embarked on a policy of ‘Doi Moi’, or reform and openness to
steadily embrace free market economic policies. This move to lift the country
out of poverty also saw the government gradually encourage openness in the
national media to expose corruption.
In 1992, when the country approved its new constitution,
clauses to defend human rights were enshrined as a national priority.
"The print media in Vietnam has always towed the party
line, but in the years leading up to the PMU-18 scandal some in the media were
trying to push the boundaries," says Kulachada Chaipipat, campaign officer for
the Southeast Asia Press Alliance (SEAPA), a Bangkok-based regional media rights
watchdog. "There were whistle-blowers who used to give journalists information."
But since then there has been a drop in the number of
corruption cases reported in the Vietnamese media, and if they do report on any
they are "minor ones," she told IPS. "The media are afraid of the
repercussions." (END)