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HANOI, Vietnam, 6 Sept (AP) – Communist Vietnam has banned journalists from covering the fifth Asia-Europe People\u2019s Forum in Hanoi, with organizers saying Monday that there was not enough room to accommodate them.<\/p>\n
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, or ASEM. The conference includes seminars on peace and security, economic and social security, and democratization and people\u2019s rights — including one workshop titled \u201cmedia and democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you meet a brick wall, then you\u2019ve got to do something,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just worried with the exclusion of journalists, the positive image of Vietnam … is going to turn out negative,\u201d 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 Tuesday.<\/p>\n
More than 800 people have registered to attend the forum, including 450 foreigners. The meeting\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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 Ann Dung, another member of the organization.<\/p>\n
The ban prohibits state-controlled Vietnamese media from attending the forum as well as international news agencies such as The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s attendance because of that military-ruled country\u2019s dismal human rights record.<\/p>\n
2004-09-06 Mon 07:01<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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