GENEVA - Deeply concerned about the three-month ban imposed on the Da Nang Publishing House in Vietnam, the International Publishers Association (IPA) wrote to the Vietnamese Minister of Information and Communications, seeking clarification and  transparency about the motives and circumstances leading to this temporary ban,  and on the “severe mistakes” committed by Da Nang, as reported in State media.

IPA also called on the Vietnamese authorities to reinstate the license of Da Nang at the end of the probation period in mid-March 2009.

According to various sources, the Vietnamese authorities issued a penalty on December 12, 2008, putting all activities of the Da Nang publishing house on hold for three months because it would have committed “severe mistakes” in publishing a book entitled
Rong Da (Stone Dragon) authored by Vo Ngoc Tien and Le Mai.

The penalty would be in effect from December 15, 2008 to March 15, 2009. After this probation period, the Da Nang publishing house would have to submit a report to the Ministry of Information and Communications for it to decide whether or not to re-instate Da Nang's publishing license.

In addition, the Ministry of Information and Communication would have also decided to "discipline" all of the Da Nang staff deemed responsible for the publishing of Rong Da.

The staff of this publishing house under license since 1984 would also have been replaced by new staff.

Chair of IPA’s Freedom to Publish Committee Bjorn Smith-Simonsen declares:

“The 28th IPA Publishers Congress, meeting in Seoul, Korea, in May 2008, passed a resolution calling on Vietnam “to engage and implement reforms, which will improve the freedom to publish in your country and will allow publishers to contribute freely to the cultural, social and economic wealth of Vietnam without fear of imprisonment, persecution or harassment for themselves, and their associates.”

“We urge the Vietnamese Government to take the path described in this resolution, and to reinstate the Da Nang publishing house as it was before December 12, 2008. Finally, ahead of Vietnam’s review on 8 May 2009 on the occasion of the 5th session of the working group of the Universal Periodical Review in Geneva, we call upon Vietnam to respect its international obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in particular Article 19, which it acceded to in 1982.”

The International Publishers Association (IPA) is the global non-governmental organization representing all aspects of book and journal publishing worldwide.