Vietnam’s 10,000-strong ‘cyber army’ slammed by rights groups

HANOI: The deployment of 10,000 cyber warriors to fight online dissent in Vietnam adds a grim ‘new dimension’ to controls on free speech in the Communist country, a rights group has said.

Vietnam routinely jails its critics and closely monitors activists on social media, which is not banned unlike in neighbouring China.

A top Vietnamese general this week said a 10,000-strong brigade dubbed ‘ Force 47’ has been tasked with fighting ‘ wrongful views’ spreading on the internet, according to state media reports.

It was not immediately clear what Force 47 is responsible for, but observers anticipate the cyber soldiers will escalate smear campaigns against activists online.

Rights groups rounded on the move.

Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said the cyber scouts announcement was a “shocking new dimension to Vietnam’s crackdown on dissent”.

Others said the tactic is designed to squeeze online critics.

“This is just the latest plank in a campaign to curb internet freedoms at all costs,” Shawn Crispin, Committee to Protect Journalists’ Southeast Asia r epr e s ent at ive, t old AFP yesterday.

“Whi le they can’t unplug Facebook, Instagram and the likes outright, they can apply more and more pressure on those platforms and it looks like these cyber troops are their latest attempt to do that.”

Vietnam’s internet is classified as ‘ not free’, according to web watchdog Freedom House, which ranks it second only to China in Asia.

Around half of the country’s 93 million people have access to the internet, and the country also ranks among Facebook’s top 10 users by numbers. — AFP