[CREATE] Free as in Speech, and Vietnam?

[P Papadeas]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 12:39 PM, Tor Lillqvist <tml at iki.fi> wrote:
> I don't want to be a killjoy, but doesn't the Human Rights situation
> in Vietnam leave much to be desired? Do we care? Should we care? (For
> some value of "we".)

I took some time to look for any info concerning the situation and I
found some resources about your concerns.
Presumably the Wikipedia article is far from cited
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Vietnam) and the only
major incident was about the "lawyer case". The propaganda against any
country that does not follow the Western way of political activity has
gone way to far imho...

> If visiting the US is a problem for political/privacy/whatever reasons
> to some people in the community, would the same people have a problem
> visiting Vietnam?

As far as I am concerned,  every country that hosted an LGM has some
serious implications on the word "freedom" ("peace-keeping ops",
"software patents", "privacy" etc). Literally every country in the
world has a political-social situation that in majority rejects our
views on freedom (this time software and media freedom)

> I know I wouldn't feel comfortable in a conference about one kind of
> freedom (the free software kind) that would (presumably) be sponsored
> by a government that is not that interested in more basic and
> universal kinds of freedom.
>
> But I am not really an expert... and I might be convinced that gaining
> more information about one kind of freedom will eventually help
> improving other freedoms, too, in a country.

That could also be the case too... by rejecting countries based on the
majority-view of the Western Culture we end up *not* being universal
and blocking the empowerment of people around the world...

Vietnam may have some issues... as every other country in the world
has more or less.

Friendly,

~π

-- 
Pierros Papadeas
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