Vietnam’s Persecution of Bloggers
So ok, bloggers can be annoying. Very often we sound a bit full of ourselves, perhaps we’ve checked our stats and found that 10 new people have subscribed and got a bit carried away. In many countries, there’s a host of attention seeking, self important rubbish riters (sic) who couldn’t get published anywhere else….
But the important point is that people get a voice, anyone gets to state their opinion – a blog is somewhere to put your point across. It’s somewhere to protest, to complain, in biblical terms it gives a voice to the meek – and we know what they’re supposed to inherit.
Vietnam know how important the opinion of bloggers is, which is why they actively persecute anyone who speaks out against them. The country is only second in the world in the league table of imprisoning blogger and dissidents – of course China is first.
Imprisoning bloggers sounds bizarre, especially by a country where you might be considering taking your next holiday. So what is a blogger, why are they so dangerous? Well here’s some definitions, just grabbed at random from the web – ‘cos that’s what we do.
- a blog is a personal journal
Do you know – I think I’ll leave it at that. It’s not complicated it just involves speaking online about things you want to talk about. But I need a list so instead, here’s one of bloggers who have been jailed in Vietnam.
- Dieu Cay – journalist and blogger
- Le Quoc Quan – human rights activist
- Paulus Le Son – activist
- Ta Phong Tang – Blogger, mother died protesting.
- Tran Huynh Duy Thuc
- Ngueyn Tien Trung – Cyber Dissident
I’ve tried to post relevant links in each case, but there is always much more to the story. I urge you to google any of the above names and be both inspired and saddened by their stories. They’re all being imprisoned for very long terms simply because of what they said online – they’re also not alone! In fact there are at least 35 bloggers/thinkers/scholars and writers who are imprisoned for no very good reason in Vietnam.
Simply put they should be free – here’s the petition…
(Updated – Petition Closed Now)