CORRESPONDENCE - 85A COMBINED REPORTS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN VIETNAM 2012

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reached 32,1 million in October 2011, a rise of 24.4 %.3 The widespread use of the Internet has offered a favorable condition for the formation of independent personal pages or blogs, though they are permitted to operate by the government as long as the bloggers stay away from such sensitive issues as the questions of Chinese occupation of the Spratly and Paracel Islands and territorial waters of Vietnam, China's exploitation of bauxite in Central Vietnam's Highlands, its killings of Vietnamese fishermen in the Eastern (South China) Sea, and especially the question of CPV leadership monopoly. Those blogs refusing to go along with its policies will eventually be either destroyed by the cyber police or stopped by its fire walls. The Freedom House's report, `Freedom on the Net 2011,' listed Vietnam among the worst Internet suppressors, only behind Tunisia, China, Myanmar, and Iran.4 In the eyes of `Reporters Without Borders' Vietnam ranked as one of ten Internet 5 enemies. As for foreign sources of information, the Vietnamese government continues to prevent its people from having access to independent and objective ones, through its technique of jamming overseas radio stations broadcasting in Vietnamese and setting up fire walls to obstruct so- called `reactionary' websites. Many Vietnamese- language websites owned by either international media agencies or overseas Vietnamese were repeatedly attacked in 2011 by hackers (including the BBC Vietnamese website in s Vietnam General Statistics Office, "Tinh hinh kinh te- xa hoi muai thang nam 2011," http://www.gso.gov.vn/default.aspx?tabid=403&idmi d= &ItemlD =12024 (accessed 14 Jan 2012) 4 Fredom House, "Freedom on the Net 201: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media" 5 Reporters without Borders, "Internet Enemies," http://en.rsf.org/internet-enemie-vietnam,39763.html (accessed 12 Jan 2012) Vietnam Human Rights Network * Annual Report 2011 February, the Viet Tan website in August, the `Dan Chim Viet' and the `People's Democracy' websites in September ...) 2. Suppression of Dissidents Who Express Different Opinions from the VCP Policies Journalists have often been reminded to keep to the "right lane," meaning to respect the one -way, truth- twisting information provided by the state. Many resistant ones among them have been arrested, fired, or detained because of their different views from those of the communist state on serious issues related to the CPV policies as well as to the corruption of officials at all levels. A number of reporters, including foreigners, who followed the anti -China demonstrations in July 2011 were harassed and detained by the police. The people are not allowed to criticize the state's policies. To silence the voices that oppose the CPV views, the Vietnamese authorities, in addition to employing rogues and rascals to assault the dissidents, resort to the maximal criminalization of the people's right to freedom of speech through the 1999 Criminal Law's Articles 79 about "activities aiming at overthrowing the people's government" and 88 about "propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam." The most frequent measures resorted to by the police to suppress dissidents' voices have been harassment and assault. The following are typical cases: - Ta Phong Tan (a woman who uses the blogger's nickname of Justice and Truth) was beaten, menaced, and humiliatingly stripped naked several times in January, March, and May of 2011. In addition, she was arrested by the police on 9 May 2011 and is still being held at No. 4 Phan Dang Luu Street in Saigon. S