Freedom of the press — a bedrock principle of American democracy — is under threat in the United States.

Here at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism we are witnessing and experiencing an alarming chill. We write to affirm our commitment to supporting and exercising First Amendment rights for students, faculty, and staff on our campus — and, indeed, for all.

After Homeland Security seized and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia’s School of Public and International Affairs, without charging him with any crime, many of our international students have felt afraid to come to classes and to events on campus.

They are right to be worried. Some of our faculty members and students who have covered the protests over the Gaza war have been the object of smear campaigns and targeted on the same sites that were used to bring Khalil to the attention of Homeland Security.

President Trump has warned that the effort to deport Khalil is just the first of many.

These actions represent threats against political speech and the ability of the American press to do its essential job and are part of a larger design to silence voices that are out of favour with the current administration.

We have also seen reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is trying to deport the Palestinian poet and journalist Mosab Abu Toha, who has written extensively in the New Yorker about the condition of the residents of Gaza and warned of the mortal danger to Palestinian journalists.

There are 13 million legal foreign residents (green card holders) in the United States. If the administration can deport Khalil, it means those 13 million people must live in fear if they dare speak up or publish something that runs afoul of government views.

There are more than one million international students in the United States. They, too, may worry that they are no longer free to speak their mind. Punishing even one person for their speech is meant to intimidate others into self-censorship.

One does not have to agree with the political opinions of any particular individual to understand that these threats cut to the core of what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy. The use of deportation to suppress foreign critics runs parallel to an aggressive campaign to use libel laws in novel — even outlandish ways — to silence or intimidate the independent press.

The President has sued CBS for an interview with Kamala Harris which Trump found too favourable. He has sued the Pulitzer Prize committee for awarding prizes to stories critical of him.

He has even sued the Des Moines Register for publishing the results of a pre-election poll that showed Kamala Harris ahead at that point in the state.

Large corporations like Disney and Meta settled lawsuits most lawyers thought they could win because they did not want to risk the wrath of the Trump administration and jeopardize business they have with the federal government.

Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos decided that the paper’s editorial pages would limit themselves to pieces celebrating “free markets and individual liberties.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration insists on hand-picking the journalists who will be permitted to cover the White House and Pentagon, and it has banned the Associated Press from press briefings because the AP is following its own style book and refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

The Columbia Journalism School stands in defence of First Amendment principles of free speech and free press across the political spectrum. The actions we’ve outlined above jeopardise these principles and therefore the viability of our democracy. All who believe in these freedoms should steadfastly oppose the intimidation, harassment, and detention of individuals on the basis of their speech or their journalism.

The Faculty of Columbia Journalism School
New York

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

For almost six decades photographer John Miller (Ngāpuhi) has been a protest photographer in Aotearoa New Zealand.

From his first photographs of an anti-Vietnam War protest on Auckland’s Albert Street as a high school student in 1967, to Hīkoi mō te Tiriti last week, Miller has focused much of his work on the faces of dissent.

He spoke of his experiences over the years in an interview broadcast today on RNZ’s Culture 101 programme with presenter Susana Lei’ataua.

Miller joined Hīkoi mō te Tiriti at Waitangi Park in Pōneke Wellington last Tuesday, November 19, ahead of its final walk to Parliament’s grounds.

“It was quite an incredible occasion, so many people,”  74-year-old Miller says.

“Many more than 1975 and 2004. Also social media has a much more influential part to play in these sorts of events these days, and also drone technology . . .

“I had to avoid one on the corner of Manners and Willis Streets flying around us as the Hīkoi was passing by.

“We ended up running up Wakefield Street which is parallel to Courtenay Place to get ahead of the march and we joined the march at the Taranaki Street Manners Street intersection and we managed to get in front of it.”

Comparing Hīkoi mō te Tiriti with his experience of the 1975 Māori Land March led by Dame Whina Cooper, Miller noted there were a lot more people involved.

“During the 1975 Hīkoi the only flag that was in that march was the actual white land march flag — the Pou Whenua — no other flags at all. And there were no placards, no, nothing like that.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In Pyongyang there is a public service which would appeal to our own Public Service Commissioner in Aotearoa New Zealand. It never makes any dissenting or controversial view known.

Rather it readies itself for any potential change in the face of the Kim family leadership. Ever ready to resume the daily grind of boot-licking and box-ticking of a docile public service.

It is, as I like to say, neutered rather than neutral, but from above it can be very hard to tell the difference.

In the ideal world that seems to be preferred in “PyongPoneke”, there is no room for open debate and each word means what the Public Service Commissioner says it means.

It is rather like the world described by Lewis Carroll: “When I use a word”, Humpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all”. Thank you Commissioner Humpty for your work taking the word “impartiality” out of the dictionary and into the public service world.

Imperial and colonial past
I am not against the public service. I am strongly for an excellent, efficient, equitable and effective public service. But you do not get that in a modern and complex society from a model of public service derived from a monocultural, inequitable and dare I say it (yes I do) imperial and colonial past.

In the real world what they like to call our public service is in fact a politically subservient service, far removed from the public it is supposed to serve.

This comment is not directed at the many thousands of public servants working closely with those they serve.

These people, the real public service, are often underpaid and overworked. They spend much time battling with the rules and processes and prejudices imposed on them by those at the top of the tree. Many are scared to speak up, so they leave or stay quiet.

I understand why, they need the job too much to risk being branded difficult. Not a few of them write to me, call me, or stop me in the street. And it is not to say “get back in line”.

They and the mandarins themselves know what the problem is. There is a square mile or so around the Beehive in Wellington, which is like the Vatican in Italy. A different country within a country. The world looks totally different from there.

Those there are mainly there for the same reason, and they are faced inwards, mentally at least, towards what they see as power and away from the people, the public they are supposed to serve.

They cannot understand Ōtara, or Cannons Creek . . .
They cannot see, hear or understand those in Ōtara, in Te Tai Tokerau, in Tairāwhiti, in Cannons Creek, on the West Coast or rural Southland.

Alongside the big consultancy firms that share their buildings, their CVs and their views, senior advisers draw up plans for the rest of us on whiteboards.

These are parsed by the “tier one” people who over coffee, wine, or whisky cosily massage these into an acceptable form for politicians. Just enough choices to create an illusion of political control, but not so much as to upset the system.

Are these people impartial or neutral ? No, they do not need to be. They have strong views which reflect the caste they belong to. Some of them even jokingly refer to this as “Poneketanga”.

They engage rafts of “communications” people to sell the story — often poorly as in Te Whatu Ora, where there are more than 200 such people and where despite that overload PR firms are often called in to sell better.

Back to basics
This is not a way to create an efficient, effective, excellent and equitable public service. To do that we will have to go back to some basics about the purpose of public service today and in the future.

To my mind this would include:

• Opening up jobs to a much wider range of people with real world experience, be that commercial or social, in forms that are not all for a lifetime, but which enable free and ongoing interchange;
• Opening up policy-making to start from the “bottom up”, and which are not based on “top down”, carefully framed, bogus consultations;
• Allowing people to speak their minds and debate difficult issues without having to assume that future political winners are not so prejudiced and narrow-minded as to refuse to work with anyone with a different opinion to theirs; and
• Paying real attention, not playing pretend attention, to the professional bodies and unions which represent staff, who mostly will prefer rightly to get on with their jobs.

None of that seems hard or dangerous to me. After all, it is only changing a public service model which has produced or failed to prevent all of the many crises we can observe around us.

Rob Campbell is former chairperson of Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This article was first published by Stuff and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji celebrated Constitution Day today virtually due to the ongoing civid-19 pandemic crisis, but many see the day as a hollow event not worth celebrating.

The national holiday marks the eighth year that the adoption of the controversial and contested 2013 Constitution by the Bainimarama government has been observed.

Among the critics this year is opposition National Federation Party (NFP) leader Professor Biman Prasad who says the document is “widely rejected” around the world while being “frequently ridiculed” at home in Fiji.

“Every year the FijiFirst Party desperately attempts to talk up the Constitution,” he declared in a statement today mocking the document.

“It even tries to suggest that it is one of the world’s best. Yet no serious constitutional lawyer believes so. Around the world it is widely rejected. In Fiji, it is frequently ridiculed.”

Prasad said the Constitution was nothing more than “a piece of paper if it is not honoured in spirit”.

“In Fiji, the Constitution does not belong to the people. The people live in fear of its institutions.”

Dr Prasad spelt out the reasons he believed caused this “national fear”:

• “Most people live in fear of the government. Many fear police assaults, which are now routine.
• “Other people fear being identified with the opposition, because they will be denied government benefits.
• “People who do not want to be vaccinated are denied welfare. Those who dissent with the government line on vaccinations are arrested.
• “Laws such as Bill 17 [introducing governance changes for indigenous land] are rammed through the Parliament without consultation. Even MPs who criticise these laws are detained and questioned by police.
• “Under our Constitution people have a right to health. Yet this government’s shocking handling of the covid-19 second wave has led to hundreds of deaths, both from the disease and from denied care. We have had some of the highest covid infection rates in the world.
• “Trade unions are refused the right to march to demand workers’ rights. And the government has not increased the already pitiful minimum wage for nearly five years. Even people with full-time work live in poverty.
• “Our Human Rights Commission is supposed to enforce and protect our constitutional rights. Yet it is widely ridiculed as a pro-government mouthpiece and a national joke.”

Dr Prasad lamented that this was the Constitution as Fiji lived it today – “the so-called ‘reality of the matter’.”

He pledged a National Federation Party government would abolish “Constitution Day” if elected in Fiji’s general election next year.

“We will instead create a Founders’ Day – a day to commemorate the great leaders of Fiji’s past, a reminder to all of us about those who led us in the lead-up to independence and helped to create our country.

“A NFP government will also reinstate Ratu Sukuna Day as a public holiday.

“We have been blessed with sound, wise leadership in the past. One day, good leadership will return to our country.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Bananas, balaclavas and banners … these were stock-in-trade for human rights activists of the New Zealand-based Coalition for Democracy in Fiji who campaigned against then Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka’s original two coups in 1987 and the “banana republic” coup culture that emerged.

Many of the activists, politicians, trade unionists, civil society advocates and supporters of democracy in Fiji gathered at an Auckland restaurant in Cornwall Park to reflect on their campaign and to remember the visionary Fiji Labour Party prime minister Dr Timoci Bavadra who was ousted by the Fiji military on 14 May 1987.

Speakers included Auckland mayor Phil Goff, who was New Zealand foreign minister at the time, and keynote Richard Naidu, then a talented young journalist who had emerged as Dr Bavadra’s spokesperson — “by accident” he recalls — and movement stalwarts.

The mood of the evening was a fun-filled and relaxed recollection of coup-related events as about 40 participants — many of them exiled from Fiji — sought to pay tribute to the kindly and inspirational leadership of Dr Bavadra who died from cancer two years after the coup.

Participants agreed that it was a tragedy that Dr Bavadra had died such an untimely death at 55, robbing Fiji of a new style of social justice leadership that stood in contrast with the autocratic style of the current Fiji “democracy”.

Naidu, today an outspoken lawyer and commentator, spoke via Zoom from Suva about Dr Bavadra’s unique approach to politics, not unlike a general practitioner caring for his patients, a style that was drawn from his background as a public health specialist and trade unionist.

He referred to Johns Hopkins University in the United States — “the bible of global statistics about covid-19 pandemic in the world” — and remarked that Dr Bavadra had gained his public health degree at that celebrated campus.

Covid and Dr Bavadra
Naidu asked how, if he had been alive today and still prime minister, Dr Bavadra might have approached the Fiji covid-19 crisis with 46 new cases of infection being reported last night.

Fiji has now had 360 cases in total since the first case was reported in March 2020, with 161 recoveries and four deaths.

Naidu described the current leadership in Fiji in response to the covid pandemic as unresponsive and lacking in direction. He believes Fiji is in a worse position today than it was in 1987 and poverty and food shortages were a growing problem.

The challenge for Fiji was a lack of consultation with grassroots organisations and a “bubble” mentality among the key leaders of Voreqe Bainimarama’s government that refused to see the suffering on the ground.

“Everything was bad in Fiji before 2006 [when Bainimarama staged his coup],” he said, reflecting the leadership’s mantra. “Everything good in Fiji is after 2006.”

Lawyer Richard Naidu speaking about Dr Bavadra’s legacy and the reality of Fiji today. Video: David Robie/FB

Naidu referred to a social media posting in relation to the Samoan constitutional crisis when he commented: “ Australia and New Zealand must be wondering: Is Samoa ‘21 just a rehearsal for Fiji ’22?” The question is what would happen if Bainimarama and FijiFirst lose the election next year.

In spite of his fears for the future, Naidu said he still remained optimistic because of the young leadership and committed civil society that was emerging in spite of the barriers.

‘Have we won?’
Looking back 34 years, Naidu asked the audience: “Have we won?”

With a negative response, he challenged the participants to keep working for a better Fiji.

Auckland mayor Phil Goff speaking at the Bavadra reunion last night. Image: David Robie/FB

Mayor Phil Goff said that after the 1987 coups, New Zealand did not just have a “trickle of migration, we had a flood of migration, and I think something like 20,000 or 30,000 people came from Fiji in the wake of the coups”.

And, he added, “that was a huge benefit to our country, it strengthened our country. But it was a huge drain on Fiji because these were the people with skills and energy and they could have been contributing had Fiji been a welcoming country, if everybody had first class citizenship.

“But they didn’t see that future for themselves in Fiji and I understand that and they came to make a better life in New Zealand.”

Goff called on those present to keep campaigning for human rights.

Union and NFIP days
Trade unionist Ashok Kumar recalled when he had worked for the Fiji Public Service Association and Dr Bavadra had been president at the time and he had inspired many people with the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement, “which had been a big issue for Fiji”.

Trade unionist Ashok Kumar speaking. Video: David Robie/FB

Other speakers also spoke of their admiration for a “forgotten” Dr Bavadra and how they hoped to “keep his memory alive”.

Former National Federation Party MP Ahmed Bhamji said it was hoped that the Bavadra lecture event would become an annual one and he declared that they were already planning for the 35th anniversary of Rabuka’s first coup next year.

Bhamji was a sponsor of this year’s event and among his fellow organisers were Nikhil Naidu, Rach Mario and Maire Leadbeater, who was MC for the evening.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

by Dr Bryce Edwards

Jacinda Ardern has led the way in how she’s responded to the Christchurch terrorist atrocity. The prime minister has emphasised the need to come together and to not allow the actions of a terrorist to divide New Zealand any further. She has laid the blame for Friday’s massacre firmly at the feet of the perpetrator, rejecting the idea that his beliefs are representative of New Zealanders (while at the same time signalling to people in this country that as a society we must question and challenge attitudes and structures that contribute to intolerance and hatred).

Ardern has won praise from across the political spectrum for her measured, compassionate approach. Others have not been so conciliatory, and the search for answers as to why the attack took place will be a difficult process, with many causes being singled out for blame.

My column on Tuesday dealt with the question of whether our political leaders have, in some part, played a role in increasing hate or intolerance – see: Politicians’ words under scrutiny after Christchurch terror attacks. Similarly, Hamish Rutherford addressed this issue in his article, Mainstream political policy may offer a home for racist views. And in Parliament yesterday Green MP Golriz Ghahraman challenged her fellow parliamentarians over having “fanned the flames of division” in the past.

There is a danger in going too carelessly down this path, however. In fact, caution is advisable. If the blame-game becomes too toxic then, not only will it become counterproductive to the search for answers, but it will poison New Zealand politics and society (something the terrorist seemed very keen to do). Knee-jerk levelling of blame has the potential to be divisive, precisely at a time when unity and harmony is required (and mostly being achieved).

In two now notorious examples of finger-pointing internationally, Australian senator Fraser Anning blamed the terrorist attacks on Muslims themselves, while in the US Chelsea Clinton copped the blame due to a recent statement she made opposing antisemitism.

At home, targets for blame have ranged from politicians, intelligence services, rightwing and leftwing commentators (everyone from Mike Hosking to Chris Trotter), free-speech advocates, firearm sellers, social media and the prejudice of the New Zealand public, but rarely is evidence offered to support the contention of culpability for this atrocity.

Debates over all of these issues, and many more, need to be had. We need answers for why this attack took place. And we must address the fact that racism and religious intolerance is a daily reality in New Zealand.

But caution is also needed. It’s worth taking heed of the warning issued by Kenan Malik, one of Britain’s leading leftwing public intellectuals, who wrote immediately in the wake of the Christchurch attacks that “the dead deserve better” than a rush into “name-calling and invective” – see his short Guardian column, Do not let raw anger cloud our judgment after Christchurch.

Malik argues that debate and examination is absolutely necessary: “The issues raised by the barbarous terror are many and urgent – the rise of the far right and how to combat it; how mainstream commentators talk of Muslims and immigration and whiteness; the boundaries of free speech; the regulation of social media. And so on. I will no doubt have my say on these issues in the coming days.”

However, this does not seem to be occurring in a healthy, productive manner: “What has been depressing, though, has been the way that much of the discussion has degenerated into name-calling and invective. The dead of Christchurch have seemingly become a stage on which every contemporary debate from Brexit to the politics of identity is played out. The rawness of anger inevitably clouds judgment.”

He concludes by saying, “To say that the dead deserve better is to say that we should be better in the way we engage with the living, with each other. And we should.”

Another British commentator, Maajid Nawaz, who is a Muslim and a former parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats, writes in even stronger terms that “Radical Islamists and radical leftists have seized on the Christchurch tragedy to push their own hateful agendas” – see his column from The Times newspaper: The New Zealand mosque massacre blame game is out of control.

Nawaz argues that this type of politicisation risks falling into the “trap” that the terrorist set to create division, chaos, and to pit the political left against the political right. He also fears the blame-game will lead to a shutting down of debate.

Nawaz is worth reading at length: “In my youth, as an angry 15-year-old Muslim witnessing the Bosnia genocide, I once succumbed to this temptation and promoted extreme Islamism myself for a few years. I know what giving in to hate feels like, and I know the lasting damage it can cause. But that is exactly the reaction that extremists want, and exactly why it must be resisted with all our might. So it is with no surprise that I noticed, a mere day after 50 of my fellow Muslims were so publicly and tragically killed, while the blood was still wet and the bodies remained unburied, that the ideologues had circled like vultures. Opportunistic Islamist and far-left extremists began calling for a purge of people whose politics they disagree with, and started publishing McCarthyite lists of personae non grata to target.”

In another column, Nawaz argues, “Now is not the time to settle political scores. Now is the time to reflect, reach out and respond with mercy from a position of moral authority” – see: New Zealand shootings: Muslims are fearful and hurting but we must not give in to hate.

Also in Britain, Claire Fox has written that “One of the most distasteful aspects of this was the casual way that within hours of the outrage, various conservative commentators were being openly named as indirectly responsible for the New Zealand massacre” – see her column in The Telegraph: Why I am so disturbed by how the Christchurch massacre is being used for political point-scoring (paywalled).

Fox says that there’s nothing wrong with debate and analysis, but this should not be motivated by pre-existing political agendas: “Don’t get me wrong: I don’t expect a moratorium on politics as we mourn. I am political and appreciate that we want to make sense of what seems such a senseless act, especially as the killer himself framed his actions in a rambling ‘political manifesto’. But a rush to use the event to push one’s own political agenda surely displays bad faith.”

After condemning the “white supremacism” behind the terrorism as well as “scaremongering about refugees” and other xenophobic ills, Fox implores that our responses don’t just lead to the suppression of debate and ideas: “I also hate the tendency to use a massacre to slander opponents or demand particular opinions are censored. Whatever comes from the New Zealand atrocity, we should be better than that. After all, the underlying message of the terrorist was that he intended to fracture political debate and divide opinion to cause a toxic virus of hostility. Let’s make sure he doesn’t succeed.”

Similar points are made by Brendan O’Neill at the Spiked-Online website. He himself points the finger at various political commentators and activists: “The blame game they’ve been playing in the aftermath of the racist mass murder in New Zealand has been ghoulish and deeply disturbing. The bodies of the 50 murdered Muslims were barely cold before various observers, activists and leftists were naming and shaming those people who they think ‘laid the ground’ for this atrocity. And it apparently includes everyone from alt-right agitators to any mainstream newspaper columnist who has raised so much as a peep of criticism about radical Islam” – see: New Zealand’s ghoulish opportunists.

Writing for The Australian, columnist Janet Albrechtsen suggested that Fraser Anning was far from the only political actor exploiting the tragedy for their own “narrow-minded, illiberal political agendas” – see: Be wary of blame and let’s not shut down debate (paywalled).

Albrechtsen argued that rightwing voices were being unfairly targeted, and political freedoms threatened: “Those playing blame games with politics are trying to paint as mainstream what happens on the fringes of politics. That attempt to tar the centre-Right with the lunacy of the far-Right is wicked, politically driven and wrong in fact. Working in reverse, the blame-gamers are also trying to present entirely legitimate debates about immigration, integration, the self-evident clash of cultures and the rise of political Islam as fringe discussions that must be shut down. The day after terrorist attacks in Christchurch, an editor at The Saturday Paper called for laws to ‘penalise media outlets, and figures that consistently promote fear and hatred’ and ‘robust laws against the spread of hate speech’.”

Here in New Zealand, Herald columnist Jon Stokes also observes that in the wake of the terrorist atrocity, “There is a move to shut down the voices and ideas of others, to try to homogenise ideas and perspectives” – see: Ideas should be challenged not shut down.

Stokes argues against suppressing too much of the information about the terrorist event and even the terrorist himself, and he also says that we need wider and healthier political debate in general: “The evil unleashed on Friday, March 15 showed me that those silenced or suppressed voices will always find a home, and an outlet to ensure they are heard. The way forward is light, not darkness, it is away with anonymity and facelessness. It is a time of ownership of our ideas and views, and embracing tolerance and understanding.”

Writing today, Karl du Fresne finds it difficult to reconcile two very different narratives that have emerged about New Zealand and the terrorist attacks. On the one hand “New Zealand reacted with a genuine and overwhelming outpouring of shock, grief and anguish”, but according to an “alternative narrative, we are a hateful nation of racists, white supremacists and Islamophobes” – see: Some would paint us as a nation of hateful racists – that’s not the real NZ.

Certainly, there are politicians and activists elsewhere who will attempt to paint a picture of hate in New Zealand for their own ends – something we are seeing in Turkey at the moment.

In this regard, it’s worth reading the views of Massey University’s Rouben Azizian, who is a professor in the Centre of Defence and Security Study: “It is very dangerous when they use this rhetoric of us against them and them against us. They have to be very careful because they can indeed incite the feelings of a clash of civilisations, when this is a clash involving one idiot, a crazy, brainwashed person against innocent Muslim people” – see Rob Mitchell’s Christchurch shooting: Erdogan comments endanger bond built on blood and battle.

Finally, there’s a case to be made that finger-pointing is almost entirely redundant given that there was a sole terrorist involved, and he was “not one of us”, echoing Jacinda Ardern’s “This is not us” refrain. The case is put by Chris Trotter, who says “What happened at the Linwood and Al Noor mosques was horrific, but it wasn’t our doing. As we begin the long journey towards recovery, it is vitally important that we keep that fact squarely before us. New Zealand is a good place. New Zealanders are good people. We are not responsible for Brenton Tarrant’s dreadful crime. This is not us” – see: What Happened Here?

A global human rights watchdog claims that Vietnam’s human rights record could jeopardise a free trade deal with the European Union.

A warning letter by Human Rights Watch, dated September 17, sent by 32 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) was addressed to the EU Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström.

It called for a “push for robust progress in Vietnam’s human rights record ahead of the possible ratification of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA)”.

“. . . loose provisions on national security have been widely used to suppress peaceful dissent and jail scores of human rights defenders. . .,” the letter said.

READ MORE: Vietnam censorship extends to popular, official news website

The letter claimed that there was a need for a series of targets that the country should meet before the agreement was handed over to the European Parliament for its approval.

The ratification of the EVFTA agreement is slated to happen at the end of this year and would rid the country of at least 99 percent of customs duties paid on exports into Europe.

Censorship has lately become a growing concern.

Censoring reality
The words Bachelor: Vietnam contestant Minh Thu uttered to Bachelor Quoc Trung on the episode which aired on September 21 said: “I went into this competition to find love, and I’ve found that love for myself, but it isn’t with you. It’s with someone else”.

While participating in the competition over time, Thu had fallen in love with another woman, fellow contestant Truc Nhu, and they left the programme together.

“In Vietnamese pop culture, there’s a lot of people that are rumoured to be LGBT or people that hint at it. . . So to see a moment that’s unequivocal, where someone is saying that they love someone else . . . I think it’s going to be very powerful to young people,” says the shows story producer Anh-Thu Nguyen.

At this point in the history of Vietnam, few are willing to come out of the proverbial closet – in more ways than one.

Despite this, censors allowed the confession to air almost completely, a move surprising many viewers and commentators.

Vietnam, a Communist country since 1976, has seen much censorship over the years and its culture, it appears, has been no different.

Bachelor: Vietnam, currently in its first season, has faced issues of potential censorship since its inception. According to the show’s executive producer, Anh Tran, it was difficult to sell to networks.

Many of the traditional parts of the United States’ version of the show had to be edited or cut out entirely to avoid censure from censors.

The rose ceremony, for example, has to be carefully edited to avoid showing a line-up of women vying for a man – the main plot point for the show.

Censorship of culture
Vietnam is ruled by the Communist Party, and censorship is seemingly common in the cultural realm as singer Mai Khoi could attest.

In March, the woman who has been dubbed as the country’s own Lady Gaga or Pussy Riot, was detained at the airport, and “interrogated for eight hours”.

Copies of her latest album, Dissent, were confiscated, she claimed in a Facebook post.
She has written songs about the women’s movement and LGBT rights. She also ran – unsuccessfully – for public office in the country. She now performs in secret in her own country.

The country has been a Communist nation since the 1960s, and censorship has long been a part of that.

Last month, Reuters reported that a court had jailed an activist for 12 years in prison and a further five years’ house arrest.

Nguyen Trung Truc, 44, was – according to a statement given by police – among a group called “Brotherhood for Democracy” in 2013. The group, police said, conducted “anti-government activities” with the aim of creating a system of “multi-party democracy” in Vietnam.

‘Hurt the prestige’
A second man, Bui Manh Dong, 40, was convicted over his comments on September 28.
Police said that Dong had “hurt the prestige and leading role of the [Communist] party and the state”.

Dong, and one other man, Doan Knanh Vinh Quang, were accused of encouraging people to protest against government policies or write posts that were critical of the government.

Vietnam has a high level of social media use among its citizens yet the country’s Communist government has introduced a new law which, according to Amnesty International, would force tech companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook to hand over data from their users.

“This decision has potentially devastating consequences for freedom of expression in Viet Nam,” said Clare Algar, international director of global operations for Amnesty International, in June.

“With the sweeping powers it grants the government to monitor online activity, this. . . means there is now no safe place left. . . for people to speak freely”.

Last year, it was reported that the country had built up a force of “cyber-troops” to tackle what they call “wrongful views”.

Jessica Marshall is a student journalist on the Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies course at AUT. She is filing articles in the Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies paper.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz