~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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[Year 2002]

Vietnam rebuts charges of press censorship

Vietnam angrily rebutted charges from international press watchdogs that it has stepped up media censorship in reaction to a high-profile gangster scandal that has rocked the ruling Communist Party. The authorities Monday dismissed as "slanderous" allegations from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) that it was hindering press freedom.

"With their fabrications which go against the facts in Vietnam, RSF and CPJ have not only damaged their prestige but also slipped into the rut of other singers in the chorus against Vietnam," the Quan Doi Nhan Dan (The People's Army Daily) said in a hard-hitting editorial. Last week the CPJ sent an open letter to President Tran Duc Luong expressing its alarm over recent efforts to curtail freedom of expression in Vietnam.

Among its concerns over tighter controls of Internet access and harassment of intellectuals, it pointed in particular to the government's ban on the reporting of a widening graft scandal implicating underworld leader Nam Cam. More than 80 officials have been arrested for their links with the 55-year-old, who was arrested late last year in the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City.

In June, RSF called for the release of three dissidents for publishing articles on the Internet criticising the Vietnamese authorities over a controversial border settlement with China. "The same timetable and similar allegations of RSF and CPJ appear to be a juggling game between international institutions about Vietnam's press freedom," the military mouthpiece said.

"There is nothing new on their slanderous allegations which are repeating again and again the themes that others like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have recently thrown at Vietnam."

The editorial accused the international rights organizations of trying "by all means and in different ways to draw a false and dark picture about democracy and human rights in Vietnam."

Agence France Presse - July 8, 2002.