For Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, expressing herself on her blog landed her in prison for 10 days.
Thirty year old Nguyen lives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, a city where Internet usage is growing rapidly. Currently, a third of Vietnam's population, or 24 million people, are online. However, there is a dark cloud hanging over the promise that the Internet holds and it is slowly threatening to silence the voice of the Vietnamese people.
Nguyen began her blog so that she could write about life, work, technology, kids ... the usual stuff. Trouble arose when she expressed her views against China's intervention in her country, including Beijing's financing of a controversial bauxite mine in the central highlands of Vietnam. These views ultimately led to her arrest and imprisonment for ten days last August. The government in Vietnam believed the views that Nguyen expressed were an abuse of democratic freedoms and infringed upon on the national benefit.
As a condition of her release, Nguyen agreed to give up blogging and posted a letter on her site professing her love of the country. After being denied a passport several months later and feeling like she has been labeled a criminal, Nguyen defiantly began blogging again.
"I think that they have to think about this," she said. "Because I just tell the truth ... If they arrest me again because I send a message outside to the world, I am not scared. This means that they show to (the) world that we don't have freedom like they say."
In the United States, it is easy to take for granted the freedom of speech that the Internet provides. It is hard to imagine that in Communist countries like Vietnam, China, and North Korea, one's ability to surf the web is continuously monitored and censored by the government. While the Vietnamese government claims to safeguard the country against obscene or sexually explicit content through its blocking efforts, much of the filtered sites also contain politically and religiously sensitive material that may undermine the Communist Party's hold on power. Amnesty International has reported numerous instances, such as the case of Nguyen, where Internet activists have been arrested for expressing their views online.
As technology continues to evolve and make the world ever smaller, future issues regarding one's seeming right to access and share information on the Internet will no doubt continue to come into question.
What a brave woman to continue to blog in the face of such conditions. Maybe stories like these will continue to shed light on the injustices around the world. But I have to remember that not every country has the freedom of speech right as we do.
ReplyDeleteI like what you chose. It a interesting story. Actually in a lot of southeast Asian countries, the government applies a strict censorship for the media, even for the Internet. For example, Singapore, although it is the most developed Internet country (in technology aspect), the broadcasting and the Internet are both censored by the government for a long time.
ReplyDeleteI think this woman is providing a good way to at least work towards keeping the government honest. If they arrest her again, (especially with all the publicity) it is possible that more people would recognize the situation and work towards helping her...giving the country a bad reputation.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great story. Part of the promise of social and new media is the opportunity for strong individuals to follow their convictions. The result is that it is becoming more difficult for regimes to maintain tight control over this kind of media. Social and new media have the potential to cause and nurture cracks in absolute power structures. The cat is struggling to be let out of the bag and the bag is getting weaker.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I admire what she is doing and wonder if I could be as strong if faced with the same situation. I worry for her safety and hope there is someone who can help her should she need it. This is not a fight that should be fought by an individual, but it shows how important one voice can be.
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