Well who would think - jailed for blogging! Yes it’s real. The three founding members of Vietnam’s “Free
Journalists Club” and prominent bloggers have been given between four and
twelve years jail in a crack-down of online dissent in the communist state. The
US State Department is “deeply troubled by the convictions of three Vietnamese
bloggers who appear to have done nothing more than exercise their right to
freedom of expression.” A human rights spokesperson said the harsh sentences
were “absolutely outrageous”. It seems one of the bloggers criticised the
government’s handling of its dispute with China over the South China Sea.
Judging by the jail terms this type of opinion is most un-welcome as in Vietnam
private media are banned and all newspapers and television channels are state
run, so it makes me wonder what would a visit to a Vietnamese library reveal?
Would it be restricted content? What books/information would be banned and
which would be ok? Even Barack Obama made mention of one of the bloggers case
in a speech calling for greater media freedom around the world. Somehow I feel
that the US State Departments comments will go un-heeded, the human rights
spokesperson dismissed and even Barack Obama will be ignored. Maybe we should
all pause for a moment and think about these ordinary people whose opinion has
put them in jail for a long time when in this country you can freely express an
opinion or visit any library, seek out
any information without criticism or condemnation, privacy intact. www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sdenney/vnban.txt is a 2002 list of banned books, essays and
articles. I wonder what information and
access to material type, education and resources there is in Vietnam libraries
now ten years later? Australia we’re a lucky, literary, library liberated land.
Source: The Age, Wednesday, September 26, 2012, by Lindsay
Murdoch South-East Asia Correspondent Bangkok, P12. Viewed 26/9/2012.
Title: Banned books and other forms of censorship
in Vietnam during 2002
Author: Stephen Denney
Library Assistant, U.C. Berkeley
Viewed 1-10-2012
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