2 Vietnamese political prisoners push for better conditions rfa.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from rfa.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The authorities have passed a raft of legislations and are deploying the state machinery to go after people who have criticised the government on social media.
During the Covid-19 lockdowns in Vietnam last year, blogger Bui Van Thuan took to Facebook to criticise a government plan to use soldiers to deliver groceries to people confined to their homes in Ho Chi Minh City. Days later, he was arrested. Thuan, 41, a former teacher in the country's northern province of Hoa Binh, was last month sentenced to eight years in prison for
"But governments also want to control Big Tech firms - they see them as being too powerful, too influential," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 'DRACONIAN' TIMEFRAME More than three-quarters of the world's over 4.5 billion internet users live in countries where authorities punish online expression, according to Freedom House, which ranked China as having the worst environment for internet freedom. Elsewhere in Asia, Indonesia enacted rules this year to make social media platforms remove content deemed unlawful or that "disturbs public order" within four hours if considered urgent, and 24 hours if not.