From posts to prison

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 day after he was set free from prison last September, Trần Huỳnh Duy Thức sent his greetings to his friends and followers on his Facebook page. The former internet entrepreneur also extended his thanks to family, friends, and international diplomatic missions who had advocated for his freedom through the years. The meat of his post, however, was his account of how he had been kicked out of prison eight months ahead of his sentence completion. The 58-year-old prominent prisoner of conscience referred to it as a coercive release. 

“There is one rather humorous thing that I want to share with you right away,” wrote Trần on his page with more than 80,000 followers.  “That is the fact that I was FORCIBLY PARDONED, something that can be said to be unprecedented in this country.”

He recounted that on Sept. 19 2024, someone “acting on behalf of the Ministry of Public Security” told him that “the President wanted to grant me a special pardon before my sentence was complete and asked me to submit a request for clemency.” 

To Trần, however, asking for pardon would be equivalent to pleading guilty for a trumped-up crime that he had never admitted committing. “Of course, I immediately refused to accept the pardon and did not sign any application,” he said in his Facebook post. “The reason is that I should be released in accordance with the new provisions of the current Penal Code regarding the offense I was accused of, rather than relying on a pardon to get out of prison.” 

The President granted him a “special pardon” anyway – apparently in time for the U.S. visit of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Secretary General. Last Sept. 20, Trần was forcibly carried out of prison over his protests and despite his fellow political prisoners’ objections. He was then put on a late flight from Vinh City to Hồ Chí Minh City. Climate activist Hoàng Minh Hồng, who had been charged with tax evasion, was released as well. 

For sure, Trần’s unusual release from prison makes for an engaging Facebook post. Yet posting about it online was quite brazen, especially for someone who had just spent more than 15 years in jail for criticizing official policies in his blog. Three months after Trần’s release, Decree No. 147/2024 on the management, provision, and use of the internet and online activities came into effect. 

Activists say that the latest social media law has merely made official the state surveillance already being conducted over the past decades. Before this law came into effect, there was the 2018 Cybersecurity Law. While they are all aware of Facebook’s acquiescence to the government, Vietnamese human rights defenders at home and abroad still have little option but to resort to the platform – at least for the time being.

An online gathering place

In a country where manifestations are technically forbidden, Facebook has become known as a space for calls for action on pressing issues. This is even as authorities have been throwing in jail those accused of or charged with anti-state posts and information on the platform. Trần was among the earlier ones put behind bars for supposed dissent online; Human Rights Watch says that by 2024’s end, over 170 rights activists and bloggers were serving jail terms in Vietnam.

Just this February, journalist Trương Huy San (also known as Huy Đức) was meted a 30-month jail term for allegedly abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon state interests, as well as on the lawful rights and interests of organizations and/or citizens under Article 331 of the Penal Code. He had been detained since June 2024; his Facebook page became inaccessible after his arrest. (This is the first publicly known criminal case in Vietnam involving Facebook posts.)

According to the Vietnam News Agency (VNA), Trương from 2015 to 2024 independently gathered information and documents, then drafted and posted numerous articles on his personal Facebook account. 

“Among these, 13 articles contained content that infringed upon the interests of the state, as well as the legal rights and interests of organizations and individuals,” said the VNA report. “These articles received a high level of interaction, comments, and shares, negatively impacting public order and social security.” But the VNA report did not provide details on what harm Trương’s posts caused to society.  

When Trần was charged with conducting anti-state propaganda in 2014, Facebook was just a few years into the Vietnamese market. At that time, more than 300 local companies were granted licenses to compete with the social media company Facebook (now Meta), but they all failed. The shutdown of Yahoo blogging platforms in 2009 also helped prompt many Vietnamese bloggers – among them political activists – to switch to Facebook.

Today more than 80 percent of Vietnam’s 101.5 million people are Facebook users, the majority of whom are aged between 25 and 34. As of early 2024, Vietnam had become the 6th biggest client base of Meta and the second largest in Southeast Asia.  

Homegrown Zalo, Vietnam’s version of WeChat and used primarily for instant messaging, is the country’s top social media platform. But Meta’s Facebook and Messenger are the second and third most popular messaging platforms in Vietnam.

Dr. Thi Thanh Phuong Nguyen-Pochan, communication and information sciences associate professor at the Catholic University of the West in Angers, France, says that among the reasons for Facebook’s popularity in Vietnam is the habitual use of social networks, explaining that for the Vietnamese, “the need to socialize and share daily life is more important than the need for information.”

“Twitter (now known as X) has very slowly set up the Vietnamese version,” she also says. “The message posted on Twitter is totally public, it has a limited number of words, et cetera. And above all, when around you everyone uses Facebook, you do not use Twitter alone.”  

In a 2024 article, researcher Nguyễn Quốc Thái and his colleagues at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands noted that while it has not been effective in pressuring the government, “Facebook was the main platform where activists popularized their problem of coastal pollution and called for actions, either from the government or like-minded citizens.”

State as Facebook’s ‘friend’

Unfortunately, Meta has reportedly aligned itself with the CPV in repressing constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression in Vietnam. In 2023, a Washington Post article asserted that Meta had been making “repeated concessions to Vietnam’s authoritarian government, routinely censoring dissent and allowing those seen as threats by the government to be forced off the platform.” It also said that the social media behemoth had “adopted an internal list of Vietnamese Communist Party officials who should not be criticized on Facebook,” a set-up that former Meta employees told the Post was “unique to Vietnam.”

In reaction to criticisms, Meta so far has provided in its transparency reports only statistics on content removal requested by Hanoi. It has been mum on why it has acceded to these and other requests from Vietnamese officials. 

A 2024 report on major foreign tech companies in Vietnam by Taiwan-based Legal Initiatives for Vietnam (LIV) pointed out major channels in which Facebook has been censored: One, state agencies — the Ministries of Public Security, Information and Communications, and Defense  — requested tech companies to remove content deemed inimical to state security; otherwise, the state would apply technical blocks. Two, Meta has actively aided and abetted the CPV by echoing its narratives. Three, it has taken little action against massive cybertroopers bombarding Facebook pages with pro-CPV comments. 

Indications are that the long arm of Vietnamese cybercensors reaches even those overseas. Human-rights lawyer Cù Huy Hà Vũ says that in mid-2024, his two Facebook accounts were removed “at the request of the MPS (Ministry of Public Security).”

 In April 2011, Cù was handed a seven-year jail sentence plus three years of house arrest for violating Article 117 of the Penal Code, which prohibits the distribution of propaganda “against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” Now living in the United States, he says that Washington’s intervention led to his early release in 2014.  

Cù says that his Facebook accounts were locked last year “at the request of the Vietnamese government, because I wrote a series of articles analyzing the life-and-death struggle that Tô Lâm undertook to win the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, in the context of General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng’s illness and his decision not to run for re-election in the 14th Party Congress.” 

He has no plans of opening a new Facebook account anytime soon. 

Posting away anyway

U.S.-based since 2023, rights activist Phạm Thị Thanh Nghiên has been communicating with her followers through her personal blog, accessible in Vietnam only with a VPN. But her online activism has led to her family back home being harassed. 

In 2010, Phạm was sentenced to four years imprisonment and three years of house arrest under Article 117. She says that when she was still in Vietnam, her personal Facebook page would be flooded with “abusive comments and threatening messages.”

Phạm also recalls that “whenever there was an event like a street protest or any human rights campaign that I participated in or initiated, they would escalate their attacks from online to real life. For example, when I peacefully protested against China or for environmental protection, I was physically assaulted.”

“Not only was I blocked from posting,” she continues, “interactions were restricted, and my posts were hidden, but I was also banned from posting in general. There was even a time when they notified me that I was banned for three days, but in reality, it lasted a whole week, even 10 days.” She says that many of her posts were indiscriminately deleted, too. 

Yet despite threats and insults from state actors, and lack of any support from Facebook, Phạm kept on posting as much as she could. That also seems to be the current game plan of many activists in Vietnam, despite the incalculable risks.

Writer and martial artist Đoàn Bảo Châu still uses Facebook to inform his followers of his hiding from local police. He even posted messages local police had sent his wife asking for his cooperation. 

On her Facebook and YouTube pages, former political prisoner Đặng Thị Huệ posts about human rights incidents, as well as the physical and virtual harassment she has been subjected to. 

A few weeks after his surprise release, Trần Huỳnh Duy Thức posted on Facebook an open letter to the then CPV Secretary General. Trần called for reform on prison conditions for political prisoners, based on his first-hand experience. ◉

Nguyện Công Bằng is an independent journalist who writes about Southeast Asia.