Journalists banned from attending Hanoi forum

Journalists banned from attending Hanoi forum

Agence-France-Presse, Hanoi

Communist Vietnam has banned journalists from covering the fifth
Asia-Europe People's Forum in Hanoi, with organizers saying on
Monday that there was not enough room to accommodate them.

The announcement drew the ire of journalists who had traveled
from various Southeast Asian countries to cover the three-day
conference sponsored by the 25-nation Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).

The conference includes seminars on peace and security,
economic and social security, and democratization and people's
rights - including one workshop titled "media and democracy."

"If you meet a brick wall, then you've got to do something,"
said Bunn Nagara, associate editor of The Star in Malaysia, who
vowed to write stories saying the Vietnamese had banned him from
doing his job.

Nagara and about 10 other journalists were flown in from a
number of Southeast Asian countries by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung,
a German-based organization promoting political dialogue within
Vietnam.

"I'm just worried with the exclusion of journalists, the
positive image of Vietnam ... is going to turn out negative,"
said Mirko Herberg, a representative of the group who voiced his
concerns to the Vietnamese organizers during a news conference
about the forum, which begins on Tuesday.

More than 800 people have registered to attend the forum,
including 450 foreigners. The meeting's organizer, the Vietnam
Union of Friendship Organizations, said it hoped to limit the
number of participants to 500. In order to do so, it opted to
exclude media organizations from attending and reduce the number
of Vietnamese groups participating, said Do Ba Khoa, a member of
the organizing group.

Instead of covering the workshops, daily news briefings will
be offered and the names of workshop participants will be
provided for follow-up questions, said Ho Anh Dung, another
member of the organization.

The ban prohibits state-controlled Vietnamese media from
attending the forum as well as international news agencies such
as The Associated Press.

The announcement comes just three days after the European
Union agreed to attend the ASEM summit scheduled Oct. 8-9 in
Hanoi.

EU foreign ministers had threatened to boycott the event over
objections to Myanmar's attendance because of that military-ruled
country's dismal human rights record.