Is Vietnam blocking Facebook?

Vietnam's growing legions of Facebook users fear that the country's communist government might be blocking the popular social networking website, which has become difficult to access over the past few weeks.

reports the Independent

Although there has been no official government comment

A technician at Vietnam Data said government officials had ordered his firm to block access to Facebook and that VDC instituted a block on the site 11 November. He declined to give his name because he was not authorised to speak to the media

Vietnam's open diplomacy has not translated into media freedoms

Haning been to Vietnam a couple of times, most recently in 2004,I always keep an eye on news coming out of the country about media freedoms.

The committee to Protect Journalists has written an open letter to the President Nguyen Minh Triet following his participation in this week’s United Nations General Assembly.

Unfortunately, Vietnam’s more open diplomacy has not translated into substantive democratic reforms at home, including in the areas of press and Internet freedom. The Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent, nonprofit organization that defends press freedom worldwide, was alarmed by your government’s recent crackdown on online journalists and political bloggers, many of whom were detained and interrogated for their reporting.

Vietnam detains another blogger

Another blogger has been arrested in Vietnam for writing about China

Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh,was arrested at around midnight on 1 September on charges of violating national security laws and “interfering in state interests.”

writes RSF which adds that

Quynh, who blogs under the name of “Me Nam,” made several criticisms of the ruling Communist party in entries posted in her blog (http://menam0.multiply.com/) on 26 August. She criticised a bauxite mine project that is being managed in large part by a Chinese company and she referred to Vietnam’s dispute with China over the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea

She is the fifth blogger to be detained following Bui Thanh Hieu , Pham Doan Trang , Nguyen Tien Trung and Dien Cay

Vietnam cracks down on the net

The Vietnamese authorities are taking a leaf out of China;s books according to an article in the Washington Post.

As the continued economic growth in the country has led to increased internet use,

Vietnam's government has issued several decrees in recent months to curtail blogging

reports Tim Johnson

The campaign started in August, when the government published an edict giving police broad authority to move against online critics, including those who oppose "the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam" and undermine national security and social order.
The law also bans "obscenity and debauchery . . . and destroying national fine customs and traditions," according to the official gazette published -- online -- by the Ministry of Information and Communications.

Vietnamese Journalists arrested

Two Vietnamese journalists have been arrested.Nguyen Van Hai and Nguyen Viet Chien are in jail facing charges of the abuse of power for personal gain.

It seems that Vietnam is in a similar positio to China a few years ago where a growing economy is struggling to match similar reforms in democratic freedoms

The journalists had been foremost in the investigation of a recent bribery scandal that brought down a member of the government.via Time Magazine

The report goes onto say that their

real crime was crossing an ever-shifting line of what the country's media can and cannot report, says Shawn McHale, a professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University who is in Vietnam on a Fulbright-Hays fellowship. Vietnam's economy has been growing rapidly for the last several years as the authoritarian government gradually embraces free-market reforms. Institutions like the press would like to see a similar lifting of controls and have increasingly been pushing the limits of government tolerance.