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Vietnamese activist Anh Chi searches the Internet at Tu Do (Freedom) cafe in Hanoi<\/strong>. REUTERS\/Kham (Kham\/Reuters)<\/em><\/p>\n By Vincent Bevins<\/p>\n HANOI \u2014 The police in \u00adcommunist-led Vietnam have been cracking down especially hard on free expression over social media for the past few months.<\/p>\n Or, at least as far as experts, regular users and dissident bloggers can tell, that seems to be the case.<\/p>\n \u201cEven activists in Vietnam struggle to say how many people are actually caught and arrested\u201d for online activity, said Janice Beanland, a campaigner at Amnesty International. \u201cBut one striking thing is that Vietnamese activists seem not to be deterred.\u201d<\/p>\n Vietnam doesn\u2019t have the resources of its big neighbor to the north to maintain a \u201cgreat firewall<\/a>\u201d or its own social media platforms. So Facebook and other global social networks are popular here. They are filled daily with all kinds of political speech, including quite direct attacks on the government. Vocal users wonder whether their output is being watched, and rumors swirl about shutdowns or hacking.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear to anyone on the Web here exactly what the rules are, leading some to question whether Vietnamese censorship is haphazard and counterproductive or part of a more considered strategy to create an efficient chilling effect.<\/p>\n Those who take free speech too far risk harassment or arrest. But how far is too far?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s getting more difficult for us. Why? Some people say that Donald Trump doesn\u2019t care about human rights, and so the [Vietnamese] Communist Party feels more free. I don\u2019t think that is the full answer,\u201d said Nguyen Chi Tuyen<\/strong>, known as \u201cAnh Chi\u201d online, one of the country\u2019s most prominent dissidents now that two of his peers have been handed long prison sentences. \u201cThey also want to threaten a younger group which is thinking of following us.\u201d<\/p>\n He was sitting in downtown Hanoi, at a self-declared \u00ad\u201chipster\u201d cafe decorated with tongue-in-cheek celebrations of the North Vietnamese communist forces that defeated the United States 40-some years ago. Downstairs, well-dressed Vietnamese youth clacked away on Apple products.<\/p>\n \u201cI am safe at this cafe now,\u201d he said, looking around. \u201cBut I have been arrested more times than I can count and could go to jail anytime.\u201d<\/p>\n There are many users, nonetheless, who have not been slowed by the uncertainty.<\/p>\n \u201cI used to be a little afraid [of getting in trouble], but not anymore,\u201d said Luke Nguyen, a real estate investor, sitting in an upscale Ho Chi Minh City cafe. He showed a piece of sexually explicit satire he recently posted publicly about the case of Trinh Xuan Thanh<\/strong>, a former Vietnamese oil executive Germany said was abducted by his own country in Berlin. \u201cBecause I\u2019m just a little guy, not even an activist, just a citizen exchanging ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n This sentiment \u2014 you can probably say what you want, as long as you aren\u2019t famous \u2013 can be heard often in Vietnam. But Beanland said that even if most of the arrests that get attention are of high-profile dissidents, there may be much more going on that does not make headlines.<\/p>\n \u201cIt appears that there have been more arrests recently. But what we hear about may just be the tip of the iceberg,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n This year so far, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh<\/strong>, known as \u201cMother Mushroom<\/strong>,\u201d and Tran Thi Nga<\/strong>, often called Thuy Nga<\/strong>, were given long sentences. Mother Mushroom got 10 years, while Thuy Nga got nine.<\/p>\n Facebook is the social network most often used to express political opinions here, and for many other daily activities as well. New SIM cards in Vietnam often come bundled with free Facebook usage, and many citizens use its Messenger app in lieu of text messages. But it wasn\u2019t always clear that Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s company would play such an important role in the world\u2019s 14th-largest country.<\/p>\n In 2013, then-Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung<\/strong> announced the goal of building a homegrown social network for young Vietnamese people. But in early 2015, he acknowledged that it would be impossible to ban social media platforms such as Facebook. \u201cYou here have all joined social networks, you\u2019ve all got Facebook up on your phones to read information. We cannot ban it,\u201d Dung told his cabinet members. \u201cWe must publish accurate information online immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, the government has set up its own Facebook page, to keep the public in the loop on new policies or to live-stream monthly cabinet meetings.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Communist Party of Vietnam is in a bind,\u201d said Zachary Abuza, a professor researching Southeast Asian politics at the National War College in Washington. \u201cIt is committed to maintaining its monopoly of power and, as such, feels threatened by unfettered social media. Yet its Internet is relatively open, and they have nothing like the Great Firewall of China.\u201d<\/p>\n Vietnam\u2019s intermittent censorship doesn\u2019t exist only online; it often appears that the state acts in cyberspace the same way it operates elsewhere. In the capital, it\u2019s quite easy to come across almost clumsy or comical surveillance. At the recent opening night of an art exhibition in Hanoi, a slightly overweight man in casual clothes walked in. \u201cOh, that\u2019s the spy, he comes to every opening,\u201d said the artists to a group of visitors. \u201cHe just eats all our snacks and drinks all the wine and then leaves.\u201d<\/p>\n He proceeded to do exactly that. But censorship is not always a joke for Vietnam\u2019s artists, who say they can have exhibitions shut down for reasons that are never explained to them.<\/p>\n The surveillance extends to sports, as well. The dissident soccer team<\/a> No-U FC<\/strong> plans the location of its weekly games \u2014 on Facebook \u2014 just before kickoff to avoid having cops show up to disrupt them. The team\u2019s name is a rejection of the U-shaped delineation of China\u2019s claim in the South China Sea. For dissidents, nationalist opposition to Chinese aggression<\/a> is their biggest issue.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d like to see electoral democracy, but not everyone I know agrees. But almost everyone I know opposes China. China is less popular than communism,\u201d said Pham Anh Cuong, a member of No-U FC. As he was talking over lunch, he got a Facebook message and burst out laughing. \u201cA friend just saw something I posted criticizing a local official and is asking me to take it down.\u201d<\/p>\n Would he? He laughed louder. \u201cOf course not! Why would I?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n