HANOI, Oct 7 (AFP) - Communist Vietnam said Monday that Internet service providers (ISPs) needed to play a greater role in preventing online access to "anti-government" and pornographic websites.
Phan An Sa, acting chief inspector at the Ministry of Culture and Information, said the country's five ISPs should enforce firewalls on all sites deemed subversive and harmful to national security.
Sa told the Dau Tu (Vietnam Investment Review) that between three and five percent of people surfed the Internet "to exploit pornographic or reactionary information".
"The main reason we have this situation is that the management capability of the Internet has not caught up with the development of its demands."
He said there needed to be more cooperation between the relevant authorities and the ISPs to prevent activities that "harm both national security and Vietnam's good morals and good customs".
Vietnam's Press Law and Publication Law should be used to control what information is made available to online surfers, Sa said.
Owners of the country's more than 4,000 Internet cafes also have a role in preventing access to subversive websites, with those that allow people access being punished, he added.
Writers and intellectuals in Vietnam are increasingly using the Internet to circulate news or opinion that is banned from the tightly controlled state press.
Consequently, the authorities have tightened controls on web access over the last few months to prevent "poisonous or harmful" material being disseminated.
International human rights groups have long charged Vietnam with smothering all political dissent by censorship and imprisoning critics of the regime.
Hanoi maintains that freedom of speech is guaranteed under the constitution, but insists that individuals are not allowed to "abuse" this right by harming the interests of the state.
As of June this year there were only 175,000 registered Internet users across the predominantly agricultural country, a 30 percent increase on 2001.
However the actual figure with online access, mainly via Internet cafes, is estimated to be as many as one million from its 79 million populace.