In a special edition, World Service programme Digital Planet looked at
the role of blogging, censorship and citizen journalism. Here Americo
Martins, Americas editor, and Giang Nguyen, head of the BBC's Vietnamese
service, talk about the effect it can have in two very different nations.
Americo Martins, Americas editor, World service
Cuban bloggers are having a strong political impact in the communist
country, despite the severely restricted access to the internet.
Only about 200,000 Cubans, or about 2% of the population, have access to
the web -most of them employees of the government, academics and
researchers. Others try to use hotels to access the internet but have to
pay about US$ 5 a day, a very high price for Cuban standards.
The government also uses censorship and intimidation to control the web
content but officials are facing a serious challenge from the small
number of bloggers who stand up and write about the harsh realities of
life in the island.
The most well know of those bloggers is Yoani Sanchez, the main person
behind Generación Y - a blog written by friends that have names that
start with the letter Y.
Yoani is much well known abroad than in Cuba.
She has received the prestigious Spanish award Ortega and Gasset for her
blog and was considered one of the 100 most influential people by Time
magazine in 2008.
But in Cuba she is facing more and mores restrictions. She cannot, for
example, update her on blog from Havana. She has to find ways to e-mail
her texts to friends abroad -they then translate the articles into
several languages and publish the blog for her.
The Cuban government says it has all the right to restrict access to
sites that are subversive. They also claim that some bloggers, including
Yoani, receive money from abroad and are "mercenaries" serving foreign
governments.
But what really concerns the government is that most blogs, including
Generación Y, are not only political. They have more impact when they
just report about the daily difficulties and lack of choice in the country.
Giang Nguyen, Head of the BBC's Vietnamese service
In December 2008, Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications
published a new set of rules to impose restrictions on internet blogs,
banning bloggers from raising subjects the government deems inappropriate.
However, this move came a bit late, given the country already had about
20 million Vietnamese using the internet - a quarter of the population.
Although not all among two million Vietnamese bloggers are interested in
politics, the infamous "Culture and Media Police" or A25 Department
keeps a watching eye on the local bloggers to make sure they follow the
new rules.
They also announced that internet service providers will be held
accountable for the content of blogs they host.
However, the restrictions cannot prevent Vietnam's burgeoning blogging
community from becoming an important source of news for many people in
the country, where electronic media is under tight control.
First of all, it is a bit too late for the government to follow millions
of blog entries and online conversations within the Vietnamese web
community but also with those of the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese
living in the USA, Europe and Australia.
The government has overlooked the growth of the internet and by the time
it came to realise that Vietnamese netizens don't need the Party's
newspapers to get the news they want, it was rather too late.
And as the Vietnamese now can freely travel abroad for business,
studies, tourism and family visits, it is not easy to control their
thinking anymore.
Secondly, the arrests and imprisonment of a number of well-known
bloggers such as Dieu-Cay in 2007 or cyberdissident Pham Hong Son some
years early have drawn criticism from the world's human rights
organisations and Western countries who are also the most important
donors of Vietnam's economic reforms.
And despite the fact that the rules ban any web posts that undermine
national security, incite violence or disclose state secrets, some
bloggers who are also well-connected journalists in Hanoi and Ho Chi
Minh City seem to know how to bypass the censorship.
They have never spoken out publicly against the government but only
constructively criticise the system's shortcomings, presumably in the
name of the public.
This doesn't mean the media police in Vietnam have given up on blogging
business and web-control activities but they have to be aware that their
actions too, like the arrest of pro-democratic lawyer Le Cong Dinh this
month in Ho Chi Minh City, can quickly become the top news on the net.
The speed of independent news is something they still cannot stop.
Digital Planet is broadcast on BBC World Service on Tuesday at 1232 GMT
and repeated at 1632 GMT, 2032 GMT and on Wednesday at 0032 GMT.
You can listen online:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/science/2009/03/000000_digital_planet.shtml
or download the podcast:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/digitalp/
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