Vietnamese “Decree 147” “Social Media skins scored as a” icy side on free speech “by legal groups

Bangkok – The new government regulations on social media in Vietnam are given to the authorities with increased powers to prevent disagreement and control of news, together with the tools for easier to monitor critics and silence them, according to an analysis published on Tuesday.

In December, the Vietnam authorities implemented “Decree 147”, tightening the regulations on social media such as Facebook, X, YouTube and Tictok in an effort to further quote criticism, said Ben Swanton, one of the authors of the 88 Project reports, a group focused on human rights and free speech Questions in Vietnam.

“Every challenge to the Government and the Communist Party, any significant challenge for their official story of events, perceives them as a situation that comes out of control,” he said in an interview with Thailand.

Among other things, the decree requires the user to check their accounts with telephone numbers or national cards that must be provided to the Government at demand, and the social media companies store their information in Vietnam.

It also prevents social media users to deal with civil journalism or publish information on suspicious government injustices, and requires companies to remove the posts considered illegal within 24 hours. The regulation requires a company for the authorities to access their internal search engines so that they can recognize the insult.

Companies on social media have by the end of March to be in line, and it is not yet clear if they will try to push away. Tictok and Facebook refused to comment on their plans, while X and Google, who owns YouTube, did not return the e -habit.

However, the researchers have noticed the fall of political posts, Swanton said.

“In the last few years, Hanoi has closed or forced the exile of the most prominent independent journalists, reformers, human rights and disidentia activists. It had a cold effect that encourages people to get involved in self -censorship,” he said. “Decree 147 is designed to turn this cooling effect into an ice party on free speech.”

Vietnamese authorities did not respond to a request for commentary on project analysis 88 or intentionally behind the new decrees.

About 65 million Vietnamese has Facebook accounts, approximately two -thirds of the population, and about 35 million has YouTube accounts. About half of Vietnam people say they get most of their news from social media.

The Government is already often insisted on critical posts outside the country, so they cannot be accessed within Vietnam, and it quickly moved to censor posts that she considers unacceptable, such as a video of a top minister who eats a gold in London 2021. While Vietnam was on COID-19 lock.

In October, a distinguished Vietnamese blogger was sentenced to 12 years in prison for articles and videos who discovered the corruption of government officials, and in January a reputable Vietnamese lawyer was sentenced to three years in prison for posting on Facebook criticized by the former head of the country.

Project 88 researchers have said that the new decree will also give to authorities better tools for those who only read or watch posts on social media.

They recorded a case of last June, in which police in one province passed through profiles of 13,328 Facebook group members who had “hostile to the country” information and identified 20 people in their province, they went to their homes and asked to leave the group.

“If it is conducted as foreseen, the decree 147 is likely to be less time to recognize groups like this and ensure that groups with content against the state are blocked in the country,” the report said.

This calls for companies of social media and others affected to refuse to adhere to the provisions of the decrees that violate the right to free expression, and the United States and the United Nations exert pressure on Vietnam to abolish the measure.