HUW WATKIN in Hanoi
December 10, 1999
The Customs Department is to increase seizures of illegally imported foreign publications.
An internal document said the "poisonous" content of foreign newspapers portrayed Vietnam in a bad light.
Published in a weekly bulletin for Customs department employees, it said Ho Chi Minh City in particular was awash with foreign newspapers as a result of "greedy" airport staff who smuggled newspapers from incoming international flights for sale in the city's bookshops and newsstands.
"According to airport authorities there are about 25 incoming international flights a day," the bulletin said.
"Each carries foreign newspapers and magazines, many with bad contents, which airport staff sell in defiance of existing regulations."
According to the Ho Chi Minh City Culture and Information Service, the illegal trade is worth about US$2 million (HK$15.5 million) a year and has prompted police, Customs and local authorities to co-ordinate a crackdown.
"To prevent the smuggling of imported [publications] it is believed that we should not stop at confiscation and administrative punishment but bring violators, including Customs staff, before the courts," the bulletin said.
Singled out as especially "noxious" were the South China Morning Post, the Asian Wall Street Journal, Singapore's Straits Times and Thailand's Nation, publications which authorities accused of "not conforming to the reality of Vietnam, a lack of impartiality and even distortion of the facts".
Conservative Vietnamese leaders repeatedly warn about the dangers of "peaceful evolution" - a term for the supposedly subversive effects of ideas from the outside world - and regulations dictate that all cultural material coming into the country be examined by Ministry of Culture officials.
But the policy has been undermined by Vietnam's steady exposure to the world and the growth in access to the Internet, a process which one foreign diplomat said was viewed by those in power with increasing alarm.
"Not only are they concerned about the way Vietnam is portrayed outside the state-controlled domestic press but they are also worried about coverage of other countries, particularly countries in this region," she said.
"They see stories about students demonstrating in Indonesia, for example, as potentially destabilising."