VIETNAM'S ONLINE PETITION MOVEMENT

In July 2014, sixty-one members of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) posted online an open letter to the party leadership and all of its members. While decrying the Party's response to China's bullying in the South China Sea, the letter called on the Party to leave off from the mistaken...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Southeast Asian affairs 2015-01, Vol.SEAA15 (1), p.402-415
Main Author: Morris-Jung, Jason
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access to information
Activists
Authoritarianism
Bullying
Civil society
Communist parties
Complaints
Democracy
Democratization
Dictators
Ideology
Intellectuals
Internet
Leadership
Petition
Petitions
Political activism
Political leadership
Politics
Population
Propaganda
Social networks
Socialism
Society
South China Sea
Vietnam
Youth
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Summary:In July 2014, sixty-one members of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) posted online an open letter to the party leadership and all of its members. While decrying the Party's response to China's bullying in the South China Sea, the letter called on the Party to leave off from the mistaken path of socialism for a definitive change to the path of the people and democracy. It was a bold statement for a country where public expressions of opposition to the authoritarian regime are strongly discouraged and sometimes harshly punished. Later in October, another online statement by a new generation of self-declared independent civil society organizations declared their support for prodemocracy demonstrators in Hong Kong and made an appeal to Vietnamese youth to take on a similar struggle at home. These initiatives were examples of a new movement in Vietnam of using online petitions to publicize social grievances while also directly or indirectly promoting liberal democratic ideas and challenging authoritarianism.
ISSN:0377-5437
1793-9135
DOI:10.1355/aa15-1w