A Vietnamese spokesperson has rejected the accusation by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Vietnam’s increasingly harsh sanctions against the freedom of press.

Spokesperson Le Thi Thu Hang of Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs

“We totally reject untruthful and biased content that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has given about Vietnam’s situation,” Spokesperson Le Thi Thu Hang of Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said at a press conference on December 17.

Vietnam ensures the enforcement of the freedom of press that is stipulated in the 2013 Constitution and related legal documents. This has been proved through the development of the press over the past years, Ms. Hang said in response to a question asking her comments for the CPJ’s recent report in which it listed Vietnam the 6th worst country in terms of press freedom with 15 journalists behind bars, including five in 2020.

The spokesperson said as of end-2019, Vietnam was home to 868 media outlets and 125 television channels. As much as 99.7% of people accessed mobile network, including 3G and 4G. More than 64 million people in Vietnam were Internet users and more than 62 million used social networks.

In Vietnam like in any rule of law in the world, everyone is equal before the law and anyone who violates the law must be tried in accordance with the legal proceedings in the substantive law, she noted.

In the 2020 World Press Freedom, the Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières (RSF)) ranked Vietnam the 175th out of 180 countries in the ranking.