From 1997 to 1998, there was a financial crisis that spread across the whole of the Asian continent. Vietnam was particularly affected by this crisis, and their economy suffered greatly with FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) falling from $1.78 billion in 1998, to $921 million in 1999. This resulted in public grievances, as people blamed the government for the economic downfall and the hardships the country was facing. The government solution to this public discontent was to blame individuals, especially in matters of corruption and abuse of power, in attempts to redirect public attention. One famous incident was the trial of a senior party member, Pham The Duyet, a politician who faced charges of corruption. The punishment for corruption became very heavy, despite the Vietnamese government itself being corrupt. This was due to weak legal infrastructure, financial unpredictability, and conflicting and negative bureaucratic decision-making. All of this had an adverse effect on the government’s tolerance of freedom of expression.
By the end of 1998, Vietnam had formed close relations with China; the Prime Minister of Vietnam traveled to China in November. This further influenced Vietnam’s government system to be modelled after China, encouraging Vietnam to follow in their footsteps even more in the way that they responded to economic problems and governmental corruption - by cracking down any public dissent. By 1999, political unrest in Vietnam had increased, and many people were dissatisfied with the freedoms and civil rights that they were granted by the government. In 1999, Tran Do, who was a senior member of the Communist Party at the time, was expelled after publicly calling for democracy and freedom of expression. This demonstrates how dire the situation was, the Vietnamese government was going to extreme lengths to conceal any public opposition to their ruling.
There were many ways in which the government limited freedom of speech and expression in 1999. For example, the Vietnamese media was owned and controlled by the state. Any publications that were not compliant with the government’s wishes in what they wanted to be published, were taken down and any other newspaper and radio outlets were shut down. The government especially did not want anyone to report on the high-levels of corruption within the regime, so when a well-known newspaper editor did exactly this, he was detained and imprisoned for over a year. The government also announced plans to regulate local internet use to increase control within the nation and track users’ actions online. Another way the government controlled and limited freedom of speech was through their strict rulings on assemblies. All group meetings required a permit to be legal and groups were strictly banned from discussing any political issues. There was also a law which states that advocating for political change was illegal. All of these examples limited the opportunity for any form of opposition to exist under this Vietnamese government.
The laws implemented alongside fear of the government were the main reasons there were very few opposition groups. There was one form of opposition to the government; human rights groups, which complained that the government was a direct obstacle to practising basic human rights. However, these groups were not prominent and had little impact on the Vietnamese people and against the government.
Overall, the Vietnamese government were hypocritical about issues concerning corruption; they scapegoated individuals guilty of this crime and punished them very harshly to divert public attention away from the economic mismanagement by the government. The Communist Party of Vietnam paralleled and modelled its government to China which had weak legal infrastructure, which led to governmental corruption. This resulted in an immensely unhappy population. However, no one was able to complain openly about this as it was a public offence. So, the greater the political and economic problems faced by Vietnam became, and the more corrupt the government became, increasing the public need for freedom of expression to criticise the government and expose these difficulties to the world.
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