Controlling Interest: Vietnam'sPress Faces the Limits of Reform (conclusion)
Restrictions on the Foreign Press
Last November, Adam Schwarz, the Hanoi correspondent for the Far
Eastern Economic Review, a Dow Jones publication, was expelled
from Vietnam after the government refused to renew his visa. Recognized
internationally as an authority on Vietnamese politics, Schwarz's
detailed accounts of political and economic developments in Vietnam
had evidently violated the government's own conception of the
foreign media's role in the country. Throughout 1996, authorities
had inked out articles, glued pages together, and cut out articles
from copies of the Review meant for circulation in Vietnam. The
censored articles included an obituary of the late foreign minister
Le Mai and a special section on trade and investment in Vietnam.
And, as Schwarz noted earlier in the year during a conference
held in Hong Kong by the Arlington, Virginia-based Freedom Forum,
he had regularly been admonished by officials and questioned about
his contacts in response to reports that he had filed. At year's
end, the Review's Hanoi bureau remained open, although no correspondent
had been assigned to the post.
Although the exhaustiveness of Schwarz's reports provoked particularly harsh retribution, all foreign journalists based in Vietnam work under similarly restrictive conditions. Some of the strictures are overt: They may maintain bureaus and residences only in Hanoi (although they are free to travel elsewhere in the country), and they are required to hire all support staff through the government's Foreign Press Center. In practice, these assistants act as informants for the government. They are required to attend weekly group meetings, where authorities remind them of their "obligations" to Vietnam, question them about their employers' meetings and correspondence, and encourage them to denounce each other for complicity in unapproved activities of the foreign press corps. Other obstacles to reporting by the foreign press are more subtle, including surveillance and wiretapping.
In a disturbing example of the government's intolerance toward enterprising foreign journalists, Hanoi police severely beat Reuters photographer Dylan Martinez as he attempted to photograph a demonstration by market women on September 9, 1996. The demonstration, held outside the Hanoi city government offices, involved about 70 vendors who were protesting conditions imposed by the managers of a newly reopened market. A busload of police arrived while Martinez was photographing the demonstrators. As he walked away, a dozen policemen surrounded him, threw him to the ground, and repeatedly kicked and punched him. He was then thrown into a van, where police again kicked him, and taken to the local police station. Before being released, Martinez was forced to destroy seven rolls of unexposed film and sign a statement acknowledging that the incident was his fault.
When CPJ raised the case during its meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Khoan, the delegation was told that Martinez's case was an anomaly and "did not reflect our policy."
Khoan's statements, however, revealed a narrow view of the foreign press's role in Vietnam-one that cast it as an accessory to the state information apparatus. "We think foreign journalists can play a very important role for us because our media is very limited," he said. "They could help us provide information about Vietnam for the foreign press community."
While enjoying considerably more leeway in reporting than entirely state-owned media, two Hanoi-based publications linked to foreign publishers already serve this mandate: the weekly Vietnam Investment Review, produced in association with Australian publisher Kerry Packer, and the monthly Vietnam Economic Times, a collaborative venture with the Swiss firm Ringier AG. Both these publications fall substantially short of a true joint venture, reflecting the government's desire to maintain a broad measure of control over the portrayal abroad of Vietnam's economy. They function under an agreement known in Vietnam as a "business cooperation contract": Rather than forming an economic entity, each partner assumes separate responsibilities, with the Vietnamese editorial board in both cases maintaining final authority over content.
In a decree that took effect in January 1997, the government also moved to restrict private access to satellite dishes. Under the regulations, ownership of satellite dishes is restricted to select government offices, people's committees, hotels of three stars and above, and radio and television stations. Although prompted by the proliferation of satellite dishes in Vietnam-many cheaper dishes are illegally imported from China and sold for as little as US$1,000-some observer --some observers questioned the extent of the decree’s impact on access to foreign broadcast news. According to one foreign correspondent in Hanoi, the English-speaking audience remains limited in Vietnam, and much of that audience will continue to have access through the existing exemptions and because of the difficulty in enforcing the decree.
Conclusion
Vietnam’s press law, adopted in 1989 at the height of the doi moi reforms, consolidated important gains by local journalists, such as the right to disseminate information obtained through their own sources and limited protections of the confidentiality of sources. In so doing, the press law effectively recognized the right of journalists to engage in investigative reporting. But at the same time, the document explicitly stated that the role of the press was to serve as the voice of the party and state.
The tension between these two conceptions of the media’s role was manifest during CPJ’s mission to Vietnam. While recognizing that they work for state-owned media, Vietnamese journalists have received conflicting signals about the acceptable boundaries of reporting. Since the advent of reforms ten years ago, the government has officially encouraged the local press to expose corruption and mismanagement, and many publications have responded to those directives with enthusiasm and dedication. The investigations of Vietnamese newspapers for leaking state secrets or questioning official policies, however, have increased the level of confusion and insecurity for local journalists.
Thus, criminal prosecution in such cases would, from CPJ’s standpoint, be unjust, because it would penalize journalists for fulfilling their professional obligations as spelled out and reiterated by authorities since the advent of doi moi.
With Vietnam’s integration into the international economy, its interests have diversified. Countervailing state secrecy, for example, is the need to insure the flow of information--an essential component of the relationship between foreign investors and their Vietnamese partners. But the government’s inclination to investigate local papers when they critically examine contracts between state agencies and foreign firms impedes this information flow. So does the monitoring--and, in the case of Adam Schwarz, expulsion--of foreign journalists who have attempted to present an independent assessment of the climate for business in Vietnam.
The reception accorded CPJ’s delegation, and the accessibility and candor of the officials with whom CPJ met are difficult to imagine in neighboring countries such as China or Burma. They clearly reflect Vietnam’s appreciation of the role of the international media in fostering relations between the United States and Vietnam, as well as the growing interaction of the Vietnamese press with the regional and international media.
Yet the continued imprisonment of Doan Viet Hoat and his colleagues paints a picture of Vietnam that is at odds with the one that the government has taken pains to present--both to CPJ and to numerous diplomatic missions. Although it was evident from CPJ’s discussions with Deputy Foreign Minister Vu Khoan that Vietnamese officials do not see Hoat as a journalist, the international press community views him and the other samizdat publishers as colleagues. Hoat’s release would send an important signal to journalists around the world that their concerns are taken seriously by the Vietnamese government.
While foreign journalists who periodically visit Vietnam have reported few difficulties in their work, those who are accredited as foreign correspondents in Vietnam have a strikingly different tale to tell. The depth of their coverage is in many ways restricted by surveillance that limits their interaction with Vietnamese citizens, questioning about reports that they have written in accordance with international reporting standards, and wiretapping that diminishes the confidence with which they can communicate with the agencies for whom they work. These conditions--coupled with the continuing prohibition against journalists’ residence in Ho Chi Minh City despite the city’s burgeoning foreign business community--stand in stark contrast to the desire, stated by Foreign Ministry officials in their conversations with CPJ, to have good relations with the foreign press. Foreign news agencies need to be allowed to establish permanent offices in Ho Chi Minh City.
Perhaps the most important channel for communication between Vietnamese media and their international counterparts will be the Internet. As a number of Vietnamese journalists recognize, it will enable the local media to reach vast new markets and gain access to information published by the international press for a modest financial outlay. With the eventual legalization of the Internet in Vietnam a foregone conclusion, it is important to insure that Vietnamese journalists themselves bear no criminal liability for received material over which they have little or no control. Such punitive provisions, currently being contemplated by the government as it prepares to initiate use of the Internet in Vietnam, would drastically curtail the Internet’s use by local journalists and would forestall Vietnam’s integration into an age marked by the preeminence of electronic information.
Several of the officials and editors with whom CPJ spoke cited the growing interaction between Vietnamese journalists and their counterparts elsewhere in the region since the country’s admission as a full member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1995. But by strictly controlling access to and dissemination of information, Vietnam is forestalling full integration into the regional community. Although there are widely varying approaches to media freedom in the ASEAN member countries--with Singapore and Malaysia as obvious examples of private ownership masking statist policies--none is so resolute as Vietnam in using subversion laws to regulate content, in restricting access to electronic media, and in limiting the freedom of foreign correspondents.
In contrast, some ASEAN countries, such as Thailand and the Philippines, offer models of a thriving, independent press. The relative influences that these countries bring to bear on Vietnam may play a significant role in determining whether a new generation of talented Vietnamese reporters, with a clear conception of their professional role, can further Vietnam’s integration into the international community.
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