Hanoi - A prominent Ho Chi Minh City journalist was fired because of pressure from high levels of government over provocative weblog posts, sources in the state-controlled media said Tuesday. Huy Duc was dismissed from the newspaper Saigon Tiep Thi on August, allegedly due to his opinions published on a blog called Osin.
On August 23, Duc posted his comments on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's message of thanks to Hungary for its decision to open its borders to East German emigrants in December 1989.
Duc noted his own visit to a Berlin museum in 2004 in harshly criticizing Soviet oppression in post-war Eastern Europe, which he referred to as "occupied nations." He contrasted Western Europeans reverence for the cemeteries of Allied soldiers with Eastern European resentment of the cemeteries of Russian soldiers.
"A war cannot be considered a war to liberate people, if people after the war are not allowed to enjoy true freedom and independence," Duc concluded. That sentence could be considered a veiled reference to Vietnam's own war of unification, often referred to in the country as a war to "liberate" the South.
The sources, who asked to remain anonymous, said the column was just one of many that led to pressure from government authorities to sack Duc.
Vietnam recent months cracked down on independent voices in media and the internet.
On Friday, journalist Doan Trang of the news website Vietnamnet was arrested. Trang had written columns criticizing Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, a diplomatically sensitive subject.
The previous day police detained blogger Bui Thanh Hieu, who had also criticized the Chinese claims, and spoke out against the government's handling of land disputes with the Catholic church.
Earlier this year, the government issued a decree ordering bloggers to restrict their online writing to personal concerns.
