Briefing on internet freedom in Vietnam

Dear Colleague:

Please join us for a briefing with leading experts on the state of Internet freedom in Vietnam on Wednesday, October 14th from 11:30am to 12:30pm in 121 Cannon House Office Building.

To most of the world, the Internet is an amazing medium to share information, promote social and economic development, and bring people together. However, the government of Vietnam sees this open source of communication as a threat. As a result the Government of Vietnam has taken numerous actions to restrict internet freedom and censor private blogs in addition to imprisoning numerous Vietnamese bloggers and pro-democracy activists for peacefully advocating their views over the Internet.

The panelists discussing this important issue will be:

• Sophie Richardson is the advocacy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division and oversees the organization’s work on China. Sophie is an expert on political reform, democratization and human rights in Asia. She has provided commentary to various media sources including BBC, CNN, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
• Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Bich is the Chairman of the National Congress of Vietnamese Americans. Born in Hanoi and educated in Saigon, the United States, Japan and Europe, he is the former director of the Vietnamese service of Radio Free Asia, and is an accomplished author and translator of Vietnamese news and literature.
• Robert Guerra is the Project Director of the Global Internet Freedom Program at Freedom House. Robert is also one of the founding directors of Privaterra – a Canadian based initiative that works with nongovernmental organizations to assist them with issues of data privacy, secure communications, information security, internet governance and internet freedom.
• Dan Hoang is spokesperson for Viet Tan, a pro-democracy party with members in Vietnam. Before becoming a full-time democracy activist, he worked as an investment banker for over 10 years. He has testified before US Congressional Committees on human rights issues and written for the Wall Street Journal, Asia Times Online and leading Vietnamese-language publications.

We hope you and your staff can attend this important briefing. If you have any questions, please contact Annie Yea in my office at annie.yea@mail.house.gov.

Sincerely,