[4] Certain topics, especially in relation to political dissidents, the legitimacy of the Vietnamese government, the way the party conducts bilateral relations with other countries, corruption by top party leaders, as well as discussing human rights issues are considered forbidden topics and are censored in a variety of ways by the Vietnamese government, including the use of physical intimidation, imprisonment without trial, destruction of materials and censorship of websites.
[5] The Vietnamese government has also made use of online operatives and nationalist netizens to combat any perceived dissent against its position as well as engaging in historical revisionism.
[7]: 125 As world powers gathered in Versailles to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I, nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh joined Vietnamese republicans in presenting a list of demands to the French authorities, notably including a demand for the granting of freedom of the press and freedom of opinion.
[7]: 446 In response, the Governor General of French Indochina at the time, Albert Sarraut, hinted at the possibility of reform during a 1919 speech in Hanoi.
[8]: 2 This phenomenon, Philippe Peycam argued, is similar with the development of a public sphere in 18th century Europe put forward by Jürgen Habermas.
[8]: 3 In the 1920s, both French and Vietnamese language (Quốc Ngữ) papers sprang up, took forthright positions, debated their peers eagerly, and tested the tolerance of colonial rulers.
[9] The French language press was largely free of censorship in Cochinchina, but circulation per day amounted to only several thousand copies total.
[8]: 72 Composed of editors, investors, writers, printers, vendors and youth, who were either from or closely connected to the economic landowning Vietnamese bourgeoisie primarily trained in Franco-Vietnamese schools.
The Vietnamese bourgeoisie's devotion to collective political claims was in many ways a product of their new-found sense of individualism, forged in the context of their prosperous positions in colonial Saigon.
[8]: 136 In March, crowds gathered at Saigon port when the leader of the moderate Constitutionalist Party, Bùi Quang Chiêu returned from a long exile in France and listened to his speeches following news of the arrest of three young journalist-activists, Nguyễn An Ninh, Eugène Dejean de la Bâtie and Lâm Hiệp Châu.
[8]: 2 In April, the mourning of the nationalist figure Phan Chu Trinh spawned big demonstrations throughout the country, with 50,000 to 70,000 men and women participating.
[8]: 2 Following the events of Spring 1926, Saigon's public sphere reframed and saw a parallel evolution toward the constitution of ideologically marked "opinion newspapers" (journaux d'opinion).
[9] Although in the 1920s, Saigon's effervescent print media failed to trigger similar activity in northern and central Vietnam, Tonkin and Annam, and many young men facing harsher colonial restrictions in Hanoi, Nam Định, and Huế headed south to exciting Saigon,[9] 1930s saw the similar development of journalism and emergence of public space in Hanoi, which spread to other parts of Vietnam.
Tự Lực Văn Đoàn (Self-strength Literary Group), arguably the most influential and celebrated intellectuals of the interwar period, published newspapers and books that pushed the limits of French colonial censorship and that carved out a pluralistic public space for dissent and reform.
[11]: 18 Besides its prolific journalistic output covering a disparate range of issues and criticizing the backward elements of Vietnamese society, the group was perhaps better known for its modern literature, which was serialized in Phong Hóa and Ngày Nay and carried a reformist bent in both form and content.
[9] Following the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm movement began soon after in the north, which was under Communist Party control.
Journalists, artists and intellectuals began advocating for a more liberal approach towards writings and other works, inspired by incidents in fellow communist countries.
[12]: 242 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong's Hundred Flowers Campaign in neighbouring China, in particular, were seen by proponents of the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm movement as encouraging developments indicating a less authoritarian and stifling stance towards free expression.
[13]: 170 The Kipp affair represents, in miniature, some of the ways that the American intervention in the Republic of Vietnam shaped South Vietnamese ideas about their cultural identity and political community.
[12]: 248 For example, the Vietnam Investment Review was forced to recall issues of their magazines when they placed a picture of the then-Prime Minister Võ Văn Kiệt underneath a photograph of a cyclist riding a bicycle.
[18]: 50 Bảo Ninh, author of the prize-winning book The Sorrow of War, largely stopped publishing new works since then, and considered the censorship regime to have resulted in the absence of a "generation of young writers" in Vietnam today.
[15]: 209 The phenomenon of Vietnamese artists enjoying relative freedom results from a number of factors: Widespread corruption, lack of education and understanding of art among government officials and police make censorship difficult to implement.
Although the "Đổi Mới" market economic reforms were introduced in Vietnam in 1986, the state has retained a tight hold over all official media.
Vietnam does not have a large market-driven music industry comparable, so the importance of private media companies in relation to censorship is limited.
Censors in the Ministry of Culture and the directors of the state-run radio and television companies, record labels, and publishing houses are often not clear about what they should and should not permit.
[16]: 152 All companies and organizations which operate websites containing material relating to "politics, economics, culture and society" or social networks are required by law to register with the government.
[16]: 153 In 2008, the Ministry of Information and Communications introduced new rules banning Internet content which "opposes the state ... undermines national security, social order and safety, causes conflict or discloses national security, military or economic secrets"[16]: 154 – a very broad definition allowing for many types of Internet content to be banned.
[28] In August 2018, a Việt Tân member was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison for Facebook posts which the government considered to be an attempt to overthrow the state.
[29] In July 2020, a court sentenced a 29-year-old Facebook user, Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong, to eight years in prison for making anti-government posts, including several criticising communist leader Ho Chi Minh.
[22] This does not apply to websites and social network operators based outside the country – however, under a 2018 cybersecurity law approved by the National Assembly, this lacuna in censorship looks set to be closed from 2019.