Vietnam press freedom deteriorating: Watchdogs

HANOI (AFP) - Vietnam has intensified its repression of journalists and bloggers, using surveillance, imprisonment and the harassment of family members to muzzle critical reporting, media watchdogs said.

Press freedom is "deteriorating sharply" as the country's communist rulers struggle with a moribund economy, a banking crisis, and rising public anger over corruption, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CJP) said on Wednesday.

Reporters Without Borders has also condemned the "growing crackdown and the continuing convictions of journalists and, above all, bloggers".

"We deplore the two-fold method of coercion consisting of reprisals against dissidents themselves together with surreptitious harassment and violent intimidation of their relatives and supporters," the group said in a report on Tuesday.