Calling On Vietnam To Release Imprisoned Bloggers And Respect Internet Freedom

Floor Speech

Calling On Vietnam To Release Imprisoned Bloggers And Respect Internet Freedom

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Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H. Res. 672, Ms. SANCHEZ's resolution calling on the government of Vietnam to release imprisoned bloggers and respect Internet freedom.

The resolution draws attention to the Internet-restrictive practices of the government of Vietnam. Often, when we speak of the Internet repression of the Chinese or Iranian government, we forget that many other nations suffer under Internet-restrictive governments, including, according to Reporters Without Borders, Vietnam, Cuba, Burma, Egypt, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. The Vietnamese government is one of the most repressive of these, and models its apparatus of repression on that of China. According to the State Department's 2009 Country Reports on Human Rights, the government of Vietnam:

..... monitored e-mail, searched for sensitive key words, regulated Internet content, and blocked many Web sites with political or religious content that authorities deemed ``offensive.'' ..... Authorities continued to detain and imprison dissidents who used the Internet to publish ideas on human rights and political pluralism ..... The government continued to use firewalls to block some Web sites that it deemed politically or culturally inappropriate, including sites affiliated with the Catholic Church, such as Vietcatholic.net and others operated by overseas Vietnamese political groups.

Mr. Speaker, this excellent resolution also calls on the government of Vietnam to release all imprisoned bloggers and cyber activists, and provides the names of 18 men and women known to be held as political prisoners due to their use of the Internet. I have visited former Vietnamese political prisoners, including Father Ly and have heard first-hand about what they suffer in those prisons. These men and women need our help, and Ms. SANCHEZ's resolution will afford them a measure of protection.

Mr. Speaker, the issue of Internet freedom becomes more urgent every year. In February of 2006 I held a major hearing that revealed the involvement of U.S. companies in enabling the Chinese government's Internet censorship and surveillance. I then introduced legislation, the Global Online Freedom Act, which would prevent U.S. IT companies from enabling repressive governments' Internet censorship and surveillance. The legislation was blocked in two successive Congresses, while, sadly, the tempo of repression increased, and the technology of repression improved. We saw this in the Chinese government's repression of Tibetan protests last spring. The government blocked Yahoo! and the video-sharing site YouTube, and ramped up its blocking of international news sites. We saw it again in that government's repression of protests in Xinjiang in June of this year. Again the government cut off Internet and phone service, and actively removed and altered comments about the protests on numerous Internet fora and Web sites. Then in Iran, when great numbers of Iranians protested the Ahmadinejad government's stealing of the election, the government responded by cutting off Internet access as well as, with mixed success, to social-networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Now every time a repressive government crushes a protest movement, or a movement for freedom or democracy, it also engages in cyber-repression--the Internet is such a strong force for freedom that dictatorships and repressive government can hardly exist without cyber-repression. In recent years cyber-repression has emerged as no less than one of the most dangerous threats to human rights, freedom, and democracy.

Congress has an obligation to better address this issue and help those who are suffering under Internet-restrictive governments. I want to draw members' attention to three other bills which, like H. Res. 672, deserve our support: Mr. WU's H. Res. 590, expressing concerns about China's Green Dam filtering software; Mr. SHERMAN's HR 3284, prohibiting federal agencies from entering into procurement contracts with anyone who exports computer technology to Iran; and HR 2271, my own Global Online Freedom Act. All of these bills speak strongly, responsibly, and constructively to cyber-repression. The Global Online Freedom Act, in the last Congress, passed all of its committees and was ready for an up or down vote on the floor; I have improved the bill and re-introduced it in this Congress, and ask colleagues to consider sponsoring it.

I strongly support this resolution in support of the persecuted bloggers of Vietnam, and thank my friend for introducing it.

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