Attacks on the Press in 2010 - Committee to Protect Journalists

<strong>Attacks</strong> on the Press in 2010either a Thai-language message citing reasons of national security or adisingenuous error message. WikiLeaks was blocked in August, apparentlyin response to the site’s publication of a comprehensive ministry list ofwebsites and pages it had blocked.With the pervasive censorship of websites, many Internet users gravitatedtoward social networking sites such as Facebook to monitor news andengage in online political discussions. Even that space wasn’t safe for unfetteredpolitical debate: In May, authorities arrested Wipas Raksakulthai, a37-year-old businessman, for posting comments on his Facebook page thatwere considered offensive to the monarchy.VietnamVietnam targeted online journalists in a clampdown on dissent aheadof a 2011 Communist Party Congress at which top government appointmentsand policies were to be determined. At least five journalisticbloggers were among dozens of activists arrested on national securityrelatedcharges, including “spreading propaganda against the state” and“abusing democratic freedoms.” The government maintained some of theworld’s strictest Internet controls, which included blocks on Facebook andnumerous Vietnamese-language websites, including those maintained bythe exile-run, pro-democracy Viet Tan and human rights organizationscritical of the government. Independent analysts found evidence of officialinvolvement in hacking attacks on critical blogs and websites.Two politically oriented blogs, Blogosin (Housekeeper) and BauxiteVietnam, came under particular attack, according to The Associated Pressand Agence France-Presse. Bauxite Vietnam, a site established to protesta controversial China-led bauxite mining project in Vietnam’s CentralHighlands region, came under distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacksbeginning in December 2009, according to the reports. DDOS attacksare a form of censorship by information overload, in which hundreds ofthousands of computers are coordinated to send or demand data from asingle website, causing its connection to the Internet to choke up or theserver to crash. After several attempts to restore the popular blog, the site’sadministrators eventually moved it to the internationally hosted Blogspotand WordPress platforms. The bauxite issue is considered sensitivebecause of the large number of Chinese workers brought in to work in themines, which are situated in a strategically important and environmentallysignificant area. Government critics have portrayed the agreement asbowing to Chinese interests.166