20 Feb 14 | Digital Freedom, News and features, Vietnam
Le Quoc Quan (Image: RFAVietnamese/YouTube)
The 30 month prison sentence for Vietnamese human rights lawyer and blogger, Le Quoc Quan, was today upheld by a Hanoi appeals court. Quan, who has frequently blogged about human rights violations by the government, was convicted in October 2013 on tax evasion charges. He has been arbitrarily detained since December 2012. A crowd of hundreds wearing t-shirts in support of Quan were present outside the court, while a European Union delegation, representatives from the United States and Canada and a small group of journalists were present at the trial. This is just the latest move in the Vietnamese authorities’ ongoing attack on dissent, free speech, free press and a free internet.
If you need to communicate with someone the Vietnamese government is interested in keeping an eye, it is always been useful to be careful. Phone conversations can be listened to. Meetings at houses could be watched. Protests are invariably filmed by government operatives. If you were going to, say, chat via Gmail’s chat function it should be switched to “off the record” to prevent a copy of the discussion being archived. Some unlucky people have seen their blog posts traced to the internet cafe they’ve later been arrested at. If you are a dissident you won’t be the only one the police are interested in; they’ll talk to your family, friends and employers, too. The latter they may ask to dismiss you.
It is Vietnam Ministry of Public Security conducts this surveillance work, while the Ministry of Information and Culture drafts many of the laws regarding internet usage and “abuse”. And it is most likely a unit within the MPS that is responsible for these, and earlier, malware attacks.
Much of the surveillance and intimidation is hardly new; similar operations took place during the Terror in the USSR. In fact, the CIA has compared the MPS with Russia’s KGB. The KGB of comrade days, however, never had to deal with the vastness of the internet. The government owns every newspaper and printing press in the country, but it has few serious servers, making control of the internet difficult. It does not stop them from trying.
In January the Associated Press in Vietnam reported on malware attacks against one of its journalists, against an American-Vietnamese blogger and against the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). These are certainly not the first of their kind but may have been the first directed against those on foreign shores. The private correspondence of Vietnamese-American blogger Ngoc Tu was posted on her blog after someone — supposed, but not verified to be the Vietnamese government — sent her an email with a link that installed malware and key logging software giving the sender access to her password and her email account. The Associated Press reporter was a sent an email purportedly from Human Rights Watch with a link to a ‘white paper’ on human rights.
Vietnam’s internet history: Enthusiasm and repression
Vietnam’s relationship with the internet has not been simple. The government has always been enthusiastic about the internet and the wholesale benefits it could, and has, brought to the nation. Though classified as an “enemy of the internet” by Reporters Without Borders for its blocking of websites and arrests of bloggers and journalists, Vietnam’s communist government has done an awful lot to ensure good internet access.
But the country’s vibrant internet culture is a direct result of government guidance and intervention. Vietnam has long valued literacy and learning and according to Professor Carlyle Thayer at the Australian Defence Force Academy, the government believed that the “knowledge era” was key to the nation’s economic development. The internet helped to provide that and greater world integration, something they have been increasingly keen for since Doi Moi in 1986 when the country began a period of economic renovation, shunning its former isolationist politics.
Twenty years ago the Vietnam Communist Party (CPV) noted three dangers facing the country: corruption, deviation from the socialist path and falling behind. The internet was seen a perfect way to engage more with the world. A 2011 report by market research firm Cimigo, headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, says: “Vietnam has seen a more rapid growth of the internet over the last few years than most other countries in the region and is one of the fastest growing internet countries in the world… Since the year 2000, the number of internet users in Vietnam has multiplied by about 120.”
However, the government misjudged, believing control to be easy, and circumventing its block beyond the ken of its citizens.
Putting the genie back in the bottle
There are three main laws bloggers, activists and others the state dislikes are charged under. Criminal Code Article 88 relates to “conducting propaganda against the state”. This is the one most often used — both draconian and helpfully vague. Then there is Article 258, relating to “abusing democratic freedoms”, and Article 79 covering “activities aimed overthrowing the Communist Party of Vietnam and People’s Socialist Republic of Vietnam”.
However there have also been numerous internet laws drafted, largely aimed at keeping citizens’ net activities restricted to useful research or harmless entertainment. An August 2001 law imposed “stringent” controls and required net cafe owners to report breaches to relevant authorities and to collect ID from their users. An August 2005 law criminalised using the internet to oppose or destabilise the state, security, economy or social order, infringe on the rights of organisations or individuals, or mess around with Domain Name System (DNS) settings — something many Facebook users started doing in 2009. In October 2007 the Ministry of Information and Culture issued a decision requiring all businesses to obtain a license before setting up a website. This has stymied growth in some ways, as it is only now that businesses are as present online as individuals.
In August 2008 Decree 97 made it illegal to “abuse” the internet to oppose the government. What got more attention was Circular 7, restricting bloggers to cover only personal, not political, topics. At the time blogging was a favoured pastime in Vietnam, Yahoo! 360 the favoured platform. Interest in blogging and blogs in general has since waned significantly. According to Cimigo, in 2009 40 per cent of internet users visited blogs and 20 per cent blogged themselves. By 2011 those numbers had halved as people increasingly moved to social media sites like Facebook.
It was the quiet block of Facebook in 2009 that caught the world’s attention. The government never mentioned a ban publicly though a purported scan of instructions to ISPs to block the site did rounds online. As the government never said much, Vietnam’s legion of Facebook users simply muttered something about “technical problems” as they “fixed” the DNS settings to access the site.
What led to the Facebook block was the organising between previously disparate groups against Chinese-run bauxite mines in the Central Highlands of Vietnam — an already ecologically and politically sensitive area. Catholics, activists, environmentalists and anti-China activists all united via Facebook to protest the mines. In 2010 the government tried to launch its own social networking site (which led to headlines such as ‘In Communist Vietnam, State Friends You’), go.vn, where users had to provide their full names and ID card details, but could also “friend” communist luminaries. The Minister for Culture and Information Le Doan Hop praised the site’s usefulness for young people and promotion of “culture, values and benefits”.
In 2010 came a decision requiring all public hotels to install Green Dam monitoring software. Theoretically it allowed the government to see what was being looked at, possibly by whom and take appropriate steps. In fact decision 15/2010/QD-UBND was something of a paper tiger; many pointed out how such a piecemeal and scattershot approach would have limited utility and could be wholly circumvented by any serious activist, though rights organisations took the appropriate potshots as a matter of course.
In 2010 a ban was put in place, ostensibly on all online gaming between 10pm and 6am, to combat gaming addiction. However, it was never fully possible to enforce thanks to most popular games being hosted by overseas servers.
The most recent attempts at curbing net use via legislation has been Decree-Law 72 on Management of the internet which formally came into effect in September 2013. Like many laws it is confusing and vague enough to be useful for any enthusiastic government prosecutor. Among other things it banned the sharing of news online. Or, rather, it banned the aggregation of news onto websites. The government took the time to publicly respond to the flurry of foreign concern and the head of the Ministry of Information and Culture’s Online Information Section protested to Reuters that the law did not violate any of Vietnam’s human rights commitments. “We will never ban people from sharing information or linking news from websites,” he said, arguing it had been misinterpreted.
There has been talk that Decree 72 was also designed to protect intellectual property, as violations have long been problematic and go far beyond dollar copies of new Hollywood films on DVD. One of the things 72 supposedly sought to do was prevent websites re-posting news from its original source with no attribution and thus make things easier for news sites whilst also laying groundwork for membership of the Trans Pacific Partnership in regards to intellectual property protection.
The more interesting requirement was that ISPs locate servers, or at least one, within Vietnam and deliver information on users to the government, rather as internet cafes have been required to do. They were also required to take down anything contravening laws. However Vietnam’s most trafficked sites do not have servers within Vietnam and with such new laws do not entirely see the point, either. Indeed there are not many substantial servers located there at all, and bloggers who fear the law usually host their blogs overseas in any case. Should the government instruct local ISPs to block say, Google, many will simply respond again to “technical difficulties” by readjusting their settings.
Peaceful evolution, draconian repression
The threat of peaceful and not so peaceful evolution hangs heavily over the heads of those in power in Hanoi.
Vietnam is regularly excoriated for its human rights record which generally means the way the nation locks up its dissidents, bloggers, religious leaders. Even US President Barack Obama made mention of blogger Dieu Cay’s ongoing detention, ostensibly for tax reasons.
According to Human Rights Watch there were at least 63 political prisoners convicted in Vietnam last year. And yet, as Professor Thayer said in a 2011 paper: “Great effort is put into monitoring, controlling and restricting Internet usage. The enormity of resources devoted for these purposes contrasts with the comparatively small number of political activists, religious leaders, and bloggers who have been arrested, tried and sentenced to prison.”
Though the numbers have increased since the above was written there is still little mass organising in this area, and large scale protests tend to be over more concrete issues: workers’ rights and wages or land grabs. However those considered potentially subversive are closely monitored, watched by both a physical presence and an online one.
Actual harassment of bloggers and their families has been common over the years. Most famously, mother of Vietnamese blogger Ta Phong Tan set herself on fire outside the Bac Lieu People‘s Committee building in the Mekong Delta in July 2012, in protest at the way her daughter had been treated.
Within the MPS are units that monitor all forms of communication and there are records of the country purchasing more complicated surveillance equipment. According to the same 2011 paper by Professor Thayer, Vietnam by 2002 had the Verint call monitoring system. Verint, a US company, supplies over 150 nations and 10,000 organisations with varied forms of security and monitoring equipment.
China in the 1990s also offered technical assistance to “monitor internal threats to national security” to the General Department II. The military also collects intelligence related to national security and with attention paid to those, abroad or within Vietnam, who “plot or engage in activities aimed at threatening or opposing the Communist Party of Vietnam or the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”.
General Department II not only, arguably, watched dissidents but also tapped senior party officials in an incident of usually opaque factionalism that later came to light.
There have been many attacks against varied blogs and websites; 16 starting in 2009 and intensifying in April of the next year. Varied activists came under fire: Catholics discussing land issues — there have been ongoing spats between Catholics and the state over land grabs — as well as environmentalists and political agitators. Sites allied to the anti-bauxite movement were also hit. IP addresses were allegedly traced back to within Vietnam and to addresses connected to the military. The attacks, verified by McAfee and Google, were botnet attacks where spyware hid in seemingly innocuous Vietnamese language keystroke software (though a Romanised alphabet Vietnamese has 29 letters and many diacritics). Neel Mehta, a security expert with Google, wrote in a blog post that: “While the malware itself was not especially sophisticated, it has nonetheless been used for damaging purposes.”
Vietnam joining the “technology race”?
That Vietnam has taken up the internet quickly and with great passion is beyond dispute but there are still gaps in the industry. Everyone may be using Google but few local businesses are profiting from the web and mobile boom.
Bryan Pelz, an IT developer, says there is “no means for direct monetization”.
“The banking industry and regulatory environment hasn’t taken strong steps to lay the groundwork for easy online payments. Essentially nobody has credit cards. If you’re building a website and hope to charge users or make a living off of advertising, it’s a tough road in Vietnam.”
And despite talented hackers and software engineers — Flappy Bird was designed by a Vietnamese engineer — with experience and skill comparable to the rest of Asia, software isn’t considered a hugely lucrative field, according to Pelz.
Of those aged 15 – 24, according to Cimigo, 95 per cent are online and spend over two hours each day on the web, via internet cafe, desktop or phone. Ninety five per cent use it for news. Google remains the top rated site in Vietnam, followed by local entertainment hub Zing. News sites Dan Tri and Tuoi Tre also feature, as does Yahoo!, Facebook and YouTube.
Last year a Russian-backed challenger to Google called Coc Coc (knock knock) opened shop. It has aimed to take some of Google’s 97 per cent market share, the reasoning being that Google had no offices in Vietnam and did not have algorithms well written enough to understand Vietnamese well. Unlike other startups it was backed with serious investment and a staff of over 300, according to the AP.
A recent article in The Atlantic reported that Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology has sponsored something called the Silicon Valley Project which aims to push Vietnam to be more than a simple producer of electronic parts (Intel has a 1 billion USD plant in the country) to a tech powerhouse with a strong startup industry and innovative firms. The recent success of Flappy Bird — one of the most downloaded apps ever — is seen as evidence of Vietnam’s larger potential.
Indeed the Silicon Valley Project’s mission statement is not dissimilar to the Communist Party’s mid-1990s ideas about the upcoming “knowledge era”: “This is the time for Vietnam to join in the technology race. Countries which fail to change with this technology-driven world will fall into a vicious cycle of backwardness and poverty.”
This government-backed and sanctioned creativity and entrepreneurship has been lauded, though it’s also been pointed out how it may rather clash with many of the internet restrictions set out in varied laws, such as Decree 72. Of course Vietnam’s ministries do not always march in-sync and what the Ministry of Information and Culture believes to be good may clash with a more pro-tech Ministry of Science and Technology.
The confirmation today that Le Quoc Quan is facing 30 months behind bars, does not bode well for the future of internet freedom in Vietnam.
This article was published on 20 February 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
20 Jan 14 | Asia and Pacific, News and features, Vietnam
Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy, of Cambodia National Rescue Party (Image: Kimlong Meng/Demotix)
Cambodia, a nation once traumatised by the ‘Killing Fields’ of the Pol Pot regime in the 1970s, has come a long way since then in rebuilding the nation from year zero, including the holding of elections and the creation of a multi-party system. But the recent flood of hate-mail and death-threats sent to Mr Ou Virak, the president of CCHR (The Cambodian Centre for Human Rights) in the capital Phnom Penh, points to a society still dangerously divided over ethnic and racial issues.
Attacks on human rights activists in Cambodia and around the world mostly come from the agents and the guardians of the status quo — the police, army, militias and private security companies deployed by major corporations seeking to block workers rights. But the death threats in this case, delivered by phone, email and Facebook to Ou Virak, did not come from government quarters, but from the virulent opponents of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), led by long-serving prime minister Hun Sen.
The hate-speech was triggered by a CCHR letter to opposition leaders representing the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), urging them to stop using racist language against the Vietnamese, the largest foreign community in Cambodia.
During one election rally long-time CNRP opposition leader Sam Rainsy told a crowd in Pray Lang Kompong Thom province: “The Yuon [The Vietnamese] are taking the Khmer land to kill the Khmer people. So the Yuon come to Cambodia to spread their relatives, to form their families and then spread out. There will be so many Yuon in Cambodia that the Khmers will be the ethnic minority. The Yuon are like thieves stealing from the Cambodian people.”
The group’s letter reads: ”CCHR is disappointed that the CNRP is once again using such harmful language, which can only encourage racism towards Cambodian citizens of Vietnamese origin, as well as Vietnamese people living in Cambodia.” This letter touched a raw and racist nerve among many opposition supporters who had been fired up by rabble-rousing speeches over the “Vietnamese threat” to their nation.
Opposition campaign speeches do not distinguish between the estimated 5% of Cambodia’s population who are ethnic Vietnamese but born in Cambodia, illegal immigrants, Vietnamese companies and citizens of the neighbouring state of Vietnam. Opposition leaders tend to lump them together as the collective “Yuon”, a pejorative word for all Vietnamese, and a convenient scapegoat for Cambodia’s ills.
Ou Virak drawing attention to the universal nature of human rights that covers all groups, including the Vietnamese minority living in Cambodia, should not provoke such rabidly violent reactions in the eyes of international human rights organisations.
Virak and the CCHR have received support from abroad, but little or no encouragement from other Cambodian human rights NGOs. Virak explained to Index: “ I think there is definitely a fear by the other NGOs that they will be attacked if they express concern regarding anti-Vietnamese rhetoric, and that they won’t be able to continue doing the work that they’re doing.”
Pung Chhiv Kek, president of local rights group Licadho, has stated “I don’t like to comment on the campaign against Mr Ou Virak. I’m not at all interested in this campaign against or for.” Yet back in the early 1990s Ms. Kek told this correspondent how she was bitterly disappointed that so many of her NGO staff at Licahdo harboured resentment towards any application of human rights principles to cover discrimination against Vietnamese residents in Cambodia.
“Sadly, many of these NGOs have shown themselves to be clearly aligned with the CNRP,” said Virak, and added “a lot of people are confused between fighting repression and just fighting the CPP”.
Thun Saray another well-known NGO leader was quoted in the Phnom Penh Post: ”I worry that if we damage one political leader, it could damage their reputation. Now it is a sensitive moment, we have to be careful.”
Cambodia, sandwiched between the two far bigger nations of Thailand and Vietnam, has suffered a substantial loss of territory during the past 600 years as a result of periodic invasions from their neighbours and the decline of the Angkorian Empire. There is a perennial fear among some Khmer people that Vietnam has evil designs to swallow Cambodia, based on a mixture of folklore, paranoia, political agitation and a jaundiced grasp of history.
The burgeoning anti-Vietnamese constituency is bolstered by their reading of Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia from 1979-1989, as proof of a Hanoi-orchestrated plot to colonise Cambodia. Vietnam is often depicted as the hidden power behind Hun Sen, the longest-serving prime minister in the region, who enjoys special historical links to Hanoi dating back 30 years.
On the other hand millions of Cambodians share a different memory of Vietnam’s intervention in 1979, which rescued them from the genocidal grip of the Khmer Rouge regime and the “Killing Fields” at a time when Sam Rainsy was living comfortably as a banker in Paris. An United Nations-backed special tribunal has been conducting trials in Phnom Penh since 2006 to hold the former Khmer Rouge leaders accountable for crimes against humanity and genocide.
Much older generation of Cambodians, who survived the “Killing Fields”, view Sam Rainsy’s vitriolic attacks as deeply divisive. Hun Sen and the CPP government have exploited these sentiments to the hilt in their electoral campaigns. Using the “Vietnamese card” did not mobilise votes for the opposition only — it can also be a double-edged sword.
In the first democratic election in 1993, under the auspices of the UN peacekeeping mission (UNTAC), Sam Rainsy was required to delete countless references to the “Yuon” in his prepared speech. Khmer-speaking UN official Tim Carney judged these to be inflammatory and offensive. In the 1998 election, however, Mr Rainsy was again criticised by UN experts for resorting to the same tactic. “Opposition leaders are inciting hatred and racism against the ethnic Vietnamese,” complained Thomas Hammarberg, the UN human rights envoy to Cambodia in 1998.
Rainsy, a former finance minister in the Cambodian coalition government in 1994 has always denied the many accusations of racism levelled at him, claiming that he is only expressing “legitimate patriotic concern that has nothing to do with stoking racial nationalist sentiment.”
Since the September 2013 election there has been major controversy over possible election irregularities and the opposition’s demand for a fresh election. The opposition has boycotted parliament, despite winning an impressive 55 seats, with the ruling CPP gaining 68 — a loss of 24 seats.
At the same time unrest has intensified with a nationwide strike of garment workers who are demanding a living wage and are also backing the political opposition calls for Hun Sen to resign.
Against this backdrop Ou Virak is deeply worried that “anti-Vietnamese sentiments are becoming more widespread as the population becomes increasingly frustrated with the political deadlock. “
During protests outside of the Canadia factory on Veng Sreng road on 3 January 2014, there were many reports of Vietnamese shops being targeted, looted and completely destroyed by protestors.
“These actions are being left un-condemned by the leadership of the CNRP,” says Virak “which brings up clear concerns as to what the CNRP would do if in power.”
But a deepening vein of racism tainting the opposition’s campaign to unseat the entrenched ruling elite around Hun Sen is likely to prove counter-productive in the long term. At a time when the opposition is buoyed by unprecedented popular support at the polls and is getting closer to achieving power, Vietnamese-bashing is not the best way for them to convince the sceptics and the international community that they could do a far better job than the CPP of running the country.
This article was posted on 20 January 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
11 Jan 14 | Burma, China, Digital Freedom, Gambia, News and features
(Photo illustration: Shutterstock)
Facebook has nearly 1.2 billion monthly active users –that’s nearly 20% of the total global population. Yet, in some countries harsh sanctions and time in jail can be imposed on those who comment on social media, in the majority of cases for speaking out against their government.
China
China is infamous for its stance on censorship but September 2013 saw the introduction of perhaps one of their more bizarre laws: post a message online that the government deems defamatory or false and if it receives more than 500 retweets (or shares) or 5,000 views and the person responsible for the post could receive up to three years in jail.
For the post to be of concern to the government it must meet certain criteria before a conviction can occur. This includes causing a mass incident, disturbing public order, inciting ethnic and religious conflicts, and damaging the state’s image. And to top that off the post could also be a “serious case” of spreading rumours or false information online.
According to the Guardian one Weibo user, China’s largest microblogging site, wrote: “”It’s far too easy for something to be reposted 500 times or get 5,000 views. Who is going to dare say anything now?” whilst another claimed: “This interpretation is against the constitution and is robbing people of their freedom of speech”.
Vietnam
Decree 72 came into effect in Vietnam this year, a piece of legislation which makes it a criminal offence to share news articles or information gathered from government sites over online blogs and social media sites. The new law was criticised globally when it was announced in September as the latest attack on free expression in Vietnam adds to the list of censorship tactics already in place in the country; websites covering religion, human rights and politics have been blocked along with social media networks and some instant messaging services.
There are also fears that Decree 72 will risk harming international relations, with a direct impact on Vietnam’s economy, as well as internal restraints on the development of local businesses. Marie Harf, Deputy Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, said in a press statement: “An open and free Internet is a necessity for a fully functioning modern economy; regulations such as Decree 72 that limit openness and freedom deprive innovators and businesses of the full set of tools required to compete in today’s global economy.”
Burma
Going to jail merely for receiving an email would seem absurd to much of the world. In Burma this is written into law.The Electronic Transactions Law 2004 allows imprisonment of up to 15 years for “acts by using electronic transactions technology” deemed “detrimental to the security of the State or prevalence of law and order or community peace and tranquillity or national solidarity or national economy or national culture”. Put into layman’s terms that could mean a hefty jail sentence for being on the receiving end of an email the government isn’t so fond of.
Despite talks to remove the lengthy jail terms many feel the changes don’t do enough to tackle a problem with censorship the country has faced for several decades.
Gambia
Those who intend to critics the Gambian government online should only do so if they have a stack of money to spare, $82,000 to be precise, or be willing to spend 15 years in jail. Under the recently passed Information and Communication (Amendment) Act anyone accused of spreading “false news” about the government or public officials online will face these heavy sanctions. Other ways in which Gambians can find themselves behind bars includes producing caricatures or making derogatory statements against public officials online, inciting dissatisfaction via internet posts or instigating violence against the government online.
Article 19 condemned the Act, criticising it for being “a flagrant breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), as well as the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), both of which Gambia is a party to”.
This article was posted on 11 Jan 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
02 Jan 14 | News and features, Politics and Society
Activists are continually harassed and punished for standing up and speaking out about social and political issues they feel are unjust in their country. Here are five activists whose government didn’t quite like what they had to say.
Raif Badawi- Saudi blogger punished after calling for ‘day of liberalism’
It would seem absurd to most people that “liking” a Facebook page could land you in jail. However, that was one of the crimes charged against Raif Badawi after he “liked” an Arab Christian page on the social networking site. The young co-founder of the Liberal Saudi Network, a website that has since been shut down, was arrested in June 2012 for “insulting Islam through electronic channels”, including insulting Islam and portraying disobedience.
In January, a court had refused to hear apostasy charges against Badawi, concluding that there was no case. Apostasy carries the death sentence in Saudi Arabia. He has since been sentenced to 600 lashes and seven years in jail.
Eskinder Nega- Ethiopian blogger
Eskinder Nega is a well-known name in Ethiopia whose journalism has been recognised by major organisations globally; he is currently serving 18 years in jail for supposedly violating the country’s anti-terrorism legislation.
Nega was arrested in September 2011 after publishing, somewhat ironically, an article criticising his government’s detainment of journalists as suspected terrorists, in particular the arrest of Ethiopian actor and government critic Debebe Eshetu . Along with 23 others, he was then convicted of having links with US-based opposition group Ginbot Seven, an organisation Ethiopia had recently added to its list of terrorists.
This is not the first time Nega has been imprisoned for speaking out in defense human rights. Meles Zenawi’s government handed him a total of eight sentences over the past decade. He is also not the only journalist to face prosecution under the Ethiopian government. According to the Amnesty Annual Report 2013 a number of journalists and political opposition members were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on terrorism charges for calling for reform, criticizing the government, or for links with peaceful protest movements. Much of the evidence used against these individuals consisted of examples of them exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association.
Shi Tao- Stung by Yahoo in China
2013 was a good year for Shi Tao; the Chinese reporter was finally released after documents leaked by Yahoo to his government saw him spend the past eight and a half years behind bars.
Tao sent details of a government memo about restrictions on news coverage of the Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary to a human rights forum in the United States. He was subsequently arrested in 2004 and sentenced the following year charged with disclosing state secrets.
Reporters Without Borders said the branch of Yahoo in Hong Kong assisted the Chinese government in linking Shi Tao’s email account to the message containing the information he had sent abroad. Yahoo was heavily criticised at the time by human rights activists and U.S. legislators with Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, publicly apologising to Shi Tao’s family.
Tao was released 15 months before the end of us 10 year restriction. It is unclear why his early release occurred.
Ngo Hao- Vietnamese blogger
You’re never too old to go to prison as 65-year-old activist Ngo Hao found out after he was handed 15 year sentence earlier this year on charges of attempting to overthrow the Vietnamese government. Accused of writing and circulating false and defamatory information about his government and its leaders, Hao was arrested in February. Further accusations included a peaceful attempt to instil an Arab Spring-style revolution and of working with dissident group Bloc 8406.
Reporters Without Borders criticised Hao’s trial for a lack of his right to a fair defence and the unwillingness to allow any family members to attend the hearing asides from his son.
Just weeks before an appeal court in the south of the country also sentenced two bloggers, Nguyen Phuong Uyen and Dinh Nguyen Kha. This takes the estimated total of bloggers behind bars in Vietnam to 36.
Jabeur Mejri- Tunisian blogger seven and a half years for posting on Facebook
After the 2011 Arab Spring many Tunisian bloggers were able to express themselves freely; a stark contrast to the censorship, arrest and jail they had come to expect under the rule of former President Ben Ali. One such blogger was Jabeur Mejri who, in March 2012, posted a cartoon of the Prophet Mohamed on his Facebook page, a post that sentenced the blogger to over seven years in jail for “attacking sacred values through actions or words” and “undermining public morals”.
The rise of ‘opinion trials’ has become a concern to many with Mejri being the first person sent to jail under the procedure. Lina Ben Mhenni told Amnesty International: “You can go to jail for a word or an idea. ‘Opinion trials’ have become part of our daily lives. As in many other countries, Tunisia’s taboo topics are religion and politics. You can’t criticize the government in general or the Islamists in particular.”
