Hanoi security ministry opens press wing

07:57 a.m. Dec 09, 1997 Eastern
HANOI, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Vietnam's powerful Interior Ministry is to open a new press wing to monitor and control media coverage and information about security issues, state media and ministry officials said on Tuesday.

The Quan Doi Nhan Dan (People's Army) newspaper said an Interior Ministry press centre was being established and would be tasked with ensuring political correctness of news about security matters.

``The centre will supervise and exploit information in newspapers to discover content related to situations and work involved in upholding security and order,'' it said.

It said the ministry would coordinate its activities with the Ideology and Culture Department of the Communist Party and the Culture and Information Ministry to ensure correct political orientation of security issues. It will also function as the official organ for disseminating security-related news.

Ministry officials declined to comment, and said only that the press centre would be opened within a matter of days.

But the decision appeared likely to increase the already substantial influence of the ministry over news media and individual journalists.

The Interior Ministry is one of the most powerful organs of state control in Vietnam. It runs the police force, but is also tasked with a range of internal security functions including surveillance and monitoring of foreign and Vietnamese journalists.

While few in Vietnam are prepared to criticise the ministry, it has come under fire from overseas rights groups.

Human Rights Watch warned last month that Hanoi was seeking to increase press controls, and said Vietnamese staff working for foreign news organisations were being obliged to report back to ministry officials.

Officials at other government departments said on Tuesday they had not been informed of the move. Local analysts said that without further detail it was too early to comment.

But the move follows a series of embarrassments for the ministry over the past year, including a high-profile drugs trial that found police officers guilty of involvement in a major drugs- trafficking ring, and problems with rural unrest.

Recent clashes between riot police and Catholic protesters in southern Vietnam's Dong Nai province has been widely reported by foreign news organisations, but not mentioned by the domestic media.

Months of civil unrest in a northern rice-growing province, Thai Binh, still has not been resolved. There police have been in a protracted stand-off with local villagers. Some 23 officers were held captive for five days in an incident last month.