Vietnamese face Internet censorship

The Vietnamese Government has set up an Internet censorship system designed to filter access to 'officially undesirable' Web sites.

Although Net access is still in its infancy in the Southeast Asian country, the Communist government has installed a national firewall, which stops its 70 million citizens from looking at sites such as playboy.com.

However, users claim the government system has big holes in it. "The irony of this system is that you can still get a lot of the bad stuff," said a local user, who preferred not to be named. "But it has also created problems for people who want to access other networks in Vietnam." Users here say that 'Big Brother' style censorship extends to e-mails too. "People who get regular emails or receive 'spam' from pro-democracy groups in California could get into trouble.

It is still dangerous to get email from groups like that," explained another user, who wished to remain anonymous. "They're screening people's emails."

Despite the censorship measures, Internet cafes are already springing up along Hanoi's broad boulevards and young Vietnamese are keen to adopt the new technology. Nguyen Viet Hung, a founding member of Hanoi's 'Webberz' Internet club, explained: "The older folk are afraid that the Internet could be a vehicle for negative influences. There has been a lot of coverage of the child pornography issue here."

"But I see the Internet as something useful, like an encyclopaedia. If we don't have access to the Internet, we're backward. We'll be left behind," he added.

Despite the enthusiasm of the fortunate few, most Vietnamese are too poor to own a PC or to pay Internet fees. GNP per capita is still only $240, and many remote rural areas still don't have electricity and telephone lines.

By September this year, official statistics showed that only around 11,000 people had signed up for Net access in Vietnam. "And only 48 per cent of those subscribers are Vietnamese," says Hung. "The rest are foreigners living in Vietnam."

The high cost of Internet subscriptions - which include a joining fee of around $40 - plus online fees of approximately $2 per hour, is making surfing the Web prohibitively expensive for ordinary Vietnamese.

"Right now," admits Hung. "The only thing that keep us from surfing freely is the cost."