Test for Vietnam government: free-speech bloggers

By BEN STOCKING
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Last fall, when police clashed with Catholic protesters over confiscated church land, the Vietnamese public didn’t need to rely on the sanitized accounts in the government-controlled media. They could read all about it on the blogs.
The photos and translated Western news reports about last September’s outlawed prayer vigils [...]

Vietnam seeks Google, Yahoo! help to control bloggers: reports

HANOI (AFP) — Communist Vietnam wants Internet giants Google and Yahoo! to help “regulate” the country’s flourishing blogging scene, state media said Tuesday, and stop “incorrect information” being published online.
The government will announce new rules this month, stressing that weblogs should serve as personal online diaries, not as organs to disseminate opinions about politics, religion [...]

Hanoi U-Turn: Vietnamese journalists are convicted for exposing alleged corruption

The Vietnamese economy’s Achilles’ heel is the country’s reputation for corruption. A recent court case shows why.
Last week Nguyen Viet Chien of Thanh Nien (“Young People”) newspaper and Nguyen Van Hai of Tuoi Tre (“Youth”) were convicted for “abusing freedom and democracy.” Mr. Chien will serve two years in jail, while Mr. Hai will be [...]

Speaking Up for Vietnam

A Buddhist monk missing since authorities evicted him from his pagoda. A Montagnard Christian beaten to death in police custody. A lawyer involuntarily committed to a mental hospital after she championed the rights of farmers kicked off their land. Journalists jailed for exposing corruption. A young man sentenced to prison after chatting online about democracy [...]

Why Vietnam Needs Freedom Now

PROTESTS will surely sur round Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s meeting today with President Bush. But Dung will no doubt still find it a relief to be out of his own country: Back home, the economy is in turmoil, with popular discontent rising.
Yet the crisis presents Dung with a huge opportunity: the chance [...]

On Vietnam’s freedom road

Many found refuge and acceptance in Canada
By JASON MILLER, SUN MEDIA
5 May 2008
Hundreds from Toronto’s Vietnamese community converged on Nathan Phillips Square yesterday to celebrate their road to freedom.
The event was held to mark the 33 years Vietnamese have found refuge and acceptance in Canada.
After 1975, when communist forces took over their country and [...]

Vietnam’s Third Way poses party teaser

 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JA29Ae02.html
As Vietnam’s rapid economic expansion gathers pace, the country’s communist party leaders are having an increasingly difficult time maintaining their so-called “Third Way” model of economic development, where centrally planned strictures and market dynamics uncomfortably co-exist.
The question merging over the transitional economy is whether, more than 20 years after the launch of market-oriented doi moi [...]

California: thousands shows solidarity to Church in Vietnam

http://www.indcatholicnews.com/califo436.html
Thousands of Catholics in California have been showing their solidarity to the Church in Vietnam over the weekend, while tensions between the Church and government over confiscated Church properties increased.
More than two thousands parishioners of St. Maria Goretti in San José, California, attended a Candlelight Vigil on Saturday to pray for the [...]

Vietnam: tensions grow between Church and government

http://www.indcatholicnews.com/viten436.html
Our correspondent in Vietnam has asked ICN readers to pray for Catholics in Vietnam as the government there has threatened to use violence against the ongoing prayer vigils calling for the return of confiscated church property.
On January 11, the local government of Hanoi issued a statement in which it accused Archbishop Joseph Ngô Quang [...]

Vietnam tells Catholics to stop prayer vigils

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20080116-112836/Vietnam-tells-Catholics-to-stop-prayer-vigils–report 
HANOI — Authorities in the Vietnamese capital have told Catholics to stop mass prayer vigils demanding the return of church land seized in the 1950s, a Catholic news website said Wednesday.
For almost a month, thousands of faithful have held prayer vigils in and around Hanoi, representing the faith’s largest challenge so far to the communist [...]