Independent Perspective News

HANOI, Vietnam -- Communist Vietnam has welcomed the Internet as a path to a market economy, but the web is causing consternation to Hanoi by broadening the reach of its critics.

Cyberspace in Vietnam, as in larger neighbor China, is controlled with firewalls and by monitoring public access at Internet cafes that have sprung up in major cities.

About a million of Vietnam's 80 million people are estimated to surf the Net -- a low figure explained by the high cost of personal computers and telecoms.

Hanoi has signaled tough measures against those who use cyberspace to broadcast their criticism, however. This week, it acknowledged for the first time it was investigating two men who criticized the government on the internet, and that one of them had been put under house arrest for 24 months.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday Tran Khue had overstepped Vietnam's democracy statutes and the rights of individuals to criticize, and had been put under arrest by his home city government, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee.

Hanoi said Khue had refused to accept correction from authorities. His term began on October 9 last year.

Vietnam did not spell out Khue's offence, but rights groups who say he is a literature professor say he upset authorities in March after he put on the internet a letter to China's President Jiang Zemin, titled "Beware of the Northern Empire."

The letter covered border pacts with China, Reporters Sans Frontiers, which is based in Paris, has said.

Vietnam and China have been bickering over their 1,350-km (838 miles) boundary for decades, and dissidents have accused Vietnam of giving up too much land to China.

Red-handed

The other critic, identified by media rights groups as computer teacher Le Chi Quang, is being investigated for similar cyberspace articles, which Hanoi calls anti-government propaganda.

Hanoi confirmed Quang's name but gave no personal details in the Tuesday statement. It said he was "caught red-handed" on February 21 while "illegally uploading the information."

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which is based in New York, said Quang is 32, and was held after officials at a popular domestic internet service provider told authorities he used an internet cafe in Hanoi to talk to "reactionaries" overseas.

Vietnam has been cracking down on internet cafes, saying it wants to root out pornography and anti-government material, and has ordered cafe operators to keep tabs on customers' net use.

Hanoi last week said businesses and organizations seeking to set up Web sites must get licences.

Hanoi accuses Quang of writing Internet articles "to distort the situation in Vietnam, slandering the Vietnam Communist Party, the state of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and undermining the national and religious unity."

Vietnam did not make clear what penalty Quang faces, or his whereabouts. The Committee to Protect Journalists said Quang is in prison outside Hanoi and could be sentenced to three to 12 years if convicted for distributing information opposing the government.

Human rights groups say at least four Vietnamese have been detained for publishing government criticism on the Internet.