From Hà Nội to Gaza: Same Oppressors, Different Arsenals

A Note from the Editors: The Vietnamese Magazine (TVM) stands in solidarity with Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Avaaz, and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). We add our voice to their campaign demanding the protection of Palestinian journalists and an end to the impunity for crimes perpetrated by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.

I don’t want to make a habit of this. My job is to report and polish the story, not be the story. But sometimes things get under your skin, and the news from a place half a world away has left me furious. So, for once, forgive me if the professional distance collapses. Allow me the space to be frank.

The latest figures I've seen, from colleagues and countless media sources, are that the Israeli military has killed more than 270 journalists and media workers in Gaza since 2023. The real number is probably higher, but the full truth is hard to come by when the campaign is directed by a dictator cosplaying as a prime minister now wanted for war crimes by the ICC.

Regardless, the most pressing question in Gaza won't be who is left to tell the story, but who is left at all. The Israeli leadership seems to be aiming for some kind of morbid world record in silencing witnesses, all under the ever-shifting guise of military necessity.

And you know, this all hits a little differently when you write about what goes on in Việt Nam. The Vietnamese government doesn’t usually need bombs to silence you; they prefer a cleaner, more bureaucratic form of repression. They opt to use a labyrinth of vaguely worded articles in the Penal Code. A Facebook post critical of the Party is “propaganda.” Exposing corruption is “abusing democratic freedoms.” Uncovering land-grabbing scandals is “disrupting social order.”

The grim irony is, the end result is often the same; the story gets buried, and the journalist gets muzzled, just with less shrapnel and more paperwork. The silence they achieve is just as deafening.

It’s an ugly, universal truth, isn’t it? It does not matter which part of the world you are in; there will always be oppressors in positions of power who will do their hardest to hold onto their riches and control, at the expense of everyone else. They just use different tools. Some use F-16s and “precision strikes”; others use rubber stamps and lengthy prison sentences. Both are instruments of power designed to protect the powerful from the truth and to delay the consequences of their actions.

That’s why the global call from so many media organizations against the violence in Gaza feels like a flare in the dark. They get it. They understand that no matter where we come from or what angle we write from—it doesn’t matter if you blindly work for state media, write stupid clickbait articles for views, or, heaven forbid, spread pointless celebrity gossip—an attack on a journalist is an attack on everyone in the field. The bullet, whether literal or legislative, is aimed at all of us.

However, let’s be honest for a moment. Most calls to action feel like screaming into the void. The powerful rarely listen to the powerless. But we do it anyway. We do it because the act of solidarity itself is a form of resistance. We do it to tell our colleagues under fire that they are not alone. We do it to remind ourselves that we still have to believe that our words matter.

It’s easy to get cynical, to feel like the bad guys, with their bombs and their prisons, are winning. But then you remember why we all got into this ridiculous, stressful, under-appreciated, and often dangerous line of work in the first place.

The role of journalists has always been the same: to speak truth to power. It’s to stand with the public, not the powerful. To document, witness, and report when everyone in charge would rather you die, shut up, or look away. It’s a fool's errand, maybe. But words have a strange tendency to outlast empires. They can expose lies, dismantle institutions, and yes, even topple tyrants. They are trying to kill our colleagues in Gaza because they know this. And it is our job, everywhere, to make sure they fail—hopefully, in a manner so spectacular it will tarnish their name for all eternity.

Note: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Vietnamese Magazine.