- Vietnam’s shrinking civil space has gotten even smaller with the issuance of a new decree on online activity, impacting environmental activists among others.
- The decree requires, among other things, that platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok maintain a server in-country that stores user data that the government can inspect whenever it wants.
- Social network users must also verify their accounts with local phone numbers or IDs, making it “impossible to remain anonymous on social media to comment on sensitive political issues,” an activist says.
- The new online restrictions follow a similar real-world tightening of civic space, with nonprofits required to legally register, and public gatherings also constrained.
For Thảo, a journalist based in Hanoi, online reports from Vietnamese internet users were key to her and her colleagues’ coverage of Typhoon Yagi and its aftermath. The storm, the biggest in Asia this year and the strongest to strike Vietnam in 70 years, made landfall in the country’s north on Sept. 7.
Millions pf people were reportedly affected, especially in northern areas overwhelmed by severe flooding and landslides. The government estimated that Yagi caused about $2 billion worth of damage to the Vietnamese economy and could hinder its GDP growth by 0.15%.
“Many state media outlets did not have the budget to dispatch reporters to the affected regions,” says Thảo, who’s affiliated with a state media outlet and asked not to use her real name. “Plus, many [state-affiliated] reporters were not willing to visit the sites for safety reasons. Those who could reach affected areas reported blocked and damaged roads due to heavy flooding.”
That made reports from citizen journalists of prime importance, she says. Yet not all such contributions to the coverage of the unprecedented disaster were welcomed by the state.
Amid the typhoon, the Vietnamese government warned citizens of the “storm” of fabricated news on social media. The Ministry of Public Security’s Cyber Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention Bureau also threatened rigorous action against individuals and organizations spreading what it deemed to be inaccurate information that might adversely impact natural disaster prevention and control efforts.
On the ground, this meant fines for users deemed to be publishing false news, such as two social media users in Hà Nam province who posted photos of flooding with the caption “Hà Nam has fallen,” or an individual in Thái Nguyên province accused of sharing unverified information about a rescue helicopter he claimed could assist stranded residents.
In all of these incidents, the one-party state was the sole arbiter of what constituted truths and untruths. As Thảo puts it: “In Vietnam, fake news includes both unverified news and news unapproved by the state agencies.”
Now, a new regulation is poised to place greater limitations on the Vietnamese public’s ability to share news and information online. On Nov. 9, the Vietnamese government passed Decree No. 147/2024 on the management, provision, and use of the internet and online activities. This decree, effective from Dec. 25, 2024, not only imposes further restrictions on internet usage but also stands to heighten the risks associated with environmental activism in the country.
Punished before, during and after the typhoon
Twenty-seven years since the arrival of the internet in Vietnam, the country of 100 million people has an internet penetration rate approaching 80%, yet remains among the most restricted cyberspaces in Southeast Asia. Freedom House, a U.S. nonprofit that advocates for democracy and political freedom, has classified Vietnam as “not free” for several years in a row when it comes to internet freedom, based on three criteria: obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights. It’s score this year, 22 out of 100 (with 100 being most free), is unchanged from 2023.
Citizen journalists already face challenges in educating and engaging their fellow Vietnamese, due to regulations including the 2005 Information Technology Law, 2018 Cybersecurity Law, and 2020 Anti-Fake News Decree.
The regulations set to go in place this month appear to make the situation worse. Article 23 of the newly passed decree stipulates that cross-border social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, must store personal data, such as names, dates of birth and phone numbers, for any users who register their accounts from Vietnam. Additionally, social network companies must sign cooperation agreements with state-run news agencies when they publicize information extracted from any Vietnamese media on their platforms. As of 2024, none of the U.S.-based companies have representative offices in Vietnam.
Since entering Vietnam in 2009, Facebook has become an accessible and affordable platform for voicing grievances, organizing gatherings, and staging protests in support of environmental justice online. For example, in 2009, wide circulation via Facebook was key to generating responses to online petitions raising awareness of government plans to mine bauxite in the central highlands. In 2015, internet users successfully prevented the felling of trees in Hanoi. In 2016, Facebook posts played a role in informing and inspiring concerned citizens seeking justice for the mass deaths of fish due to coastal pollution.
In 2021, in a series of livestreamed talks on Facebook, Nguyễn Phương Hằng, a Vietnamese-Canadian businesswoman, revealed a lack of transparency in the use of citizens’ donations raised and managed by several celebrities-cum-philanthropists to flood victims in central Vietnam in 2020 and 2021. Not long after, Hoài Linh, a well-known comedian, publicly apologized for the slow disbursement of crowdsourced funds. However, Nguyễn was arrested for abusing fundamental freedoms in 2022.
News on ongoing hunger strikes by recently imprisoned environmentalists can only be accessed by Facebook accounts of individual activists and as well as Facebook pages of international media outlets such as the BBC, VOA and RFA, whose websites have been blocked in Vietnam after they were deemed as enemies by the government.
Even prior to the passage of the new 200-page decree, netizens have been surveilled for their online postings of environmental issues on their social media accounts.
According to Meta’s Transparency Report, between July 2023 and December 2023, Facebook restricted access in Vietnam to more than 2,300 items in response to reports from the Ministry of Information and Communications’ (MIC) Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information (ABEI) and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). The new decree gives these two agencies a mandate to demand that both onshore and offshore providers remove content, services and applications deemed illegal.
The new decree also stipulates these platforms verify social network user accounts with their Vietnamese phone numbers or personal identification numbers, as well as actively monitor content. Accordingly, only successfully authenticated accounts will be able share, comment, livestream, or publish information on social networks. In addition, social media companies must fulfill the requirement of having at least one server located in Vietnam that stores their users’ data, and allowing the government to inspect and examine it at its discretion.
Severed connections
Article 25 of Vietnam’s 2013 Constitution provides that Vietnamese citizens shall enjoy the right to assemble, form associations and hold demonstrations. Yet the nonstate sector has been increasingly restricted and repressed, with public gatherings needing registration and authorities’ permission, according to a 2005 decree.
Nonprofits, too, require legal registration, a process that has become increasingly challenging. “In the last five to seven years, I don’t know of any new nonprofits that have managed to register,” says one U.S.-based researcher on civil society in Vietnam. Those operating in a gray area often rely on Facebook and other social media to disseminate information and organize.
Independent activist Yến, not her real name, says she’s pessimistic about connecting with other activists across the country.
“Nowadays, it is impossible to remain anonymous on social media to comment on sensitive political issues,” she says, adding that she received notification via email that strangers had attempted to log in to her Facebook accounts when her eco-defender colleagues were arrested.
For human rights lawyer Nguyễn Văn Đài, who has lived in exile in Germany since 2018, “social media was the only way to connect with more than 100 million people in Vietnam.”
“From June 2023 to now, I have created eight new YouTube channels, but each YouTube channel only existed for a few weeks before being deleted by Google,” Nguyễn says. He adds that over the past two years, efforts by international state agencies, diplomats and NGOs to negotiate with Google to help restore his YouTube channel were futile. “Google has restricted my use of their YouTube service,” Nguyễn says. “Currently, no one can help me.”
Vi Trần, executive director of Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV), a nonprofit based in Taiwan, says social media companies should learn from past successes in negotiating with the Vietnamese government, as in the case of Google, which owns YouTube, and Meta, the owner of Facebook, rising above the pressure to hand over users’ data to the Vietnamese government.
“The victory of the foreign tech companies on the data localization was the result of their negotiations with the Vietnamese government through the bilateral meetings and with their chambers of commerce inside the country,” says Trần, urging international actors to join hands to protect freedom of expression in Vietnam.
Banner image: Deforestation in Vinh Kien, northern Vietnam. Image by Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
Shrinking civil space and persistent logging: 2023 in review in Southeast Asia
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