Vietnamese authorities authorities are on the lookout for a web based gaming streamer who made disparaging feedback about unnamed heads of state, calling them bald-headed pornography viewers, state media reported.

Nguyen Thi Thanh Mortgage, often known as Milona, made the feedback as she livestreamed herself taking part in League of Legends on Fb’s gaming platform. The Ministry of Public Providers is investigating whether or not she was referring to Vietnam’s leaders. 

“Individuals who usually watch 18+ [adult] motion pictures are typically slightly bald,” Milona stated in the course of the stay stream. 

“Maybe as they don’t do a damned factor however watch 18+ motion pictures at dwelling all day, state presidents all go bald,” she stated. “Their f***king heads solely have a number of hairs left, proper? As a result of they don’t do any f***king issues however keep at dwelling to look at 18+ motion pictures.” 

Milona, who has greater than 200,000 followers on Fb and is a well known streamer, didn’t point out particular heads of state or particular international locations, many Vietnamese Fb customers and state media prompt that she ought to be punished if she had referred to one of many nation’s 4 prime leaders.

Dominated for many years by the ruling Communist Celebration of Vietnam, the Southeast Asian nation has little tolerance for dissent or statements that insult the nation’s leaders. 

Vietnam’s Inspection Division is investigating the feminine streamer, whose video clip with inappropriate statements went viral on social media, in accordance with a report by state-run Labor newspaper on Friday that quoted a prime official on the Hanoi Division of Data and Communications. 

A Hanoi-based human rights lawyer, who declined to be recognized in order to talk freely, stated authorities are overreacting to the streamer’s statements, which seem to have been made in jest. 

“I discover it humorous and ridiculous when the accountable authorities threaten to confirm and examine the case, and when the general public — principally younger individuals — ask that she be fined,” he stated. “They don’t perceive what freedom of speech is.

“The dealing with of the federal government businesses and the habits of the vast majority of younger individuals remind me of the feudal time when somebody who spoke blasphemously concerning the king can be punished,” he stated. “Nevertheless, we live in trendy society, not in feudal instances.

“This mindset is extraordinarily harmful because the concern and worries about offending high-level leaders are deeply ingrained in individuals’s minds,” the lawyer added. “That mindset regularly makes individuals change into obedient and never dare to struggle in opposition to high-level leaders’ wrongdoings.”

Freedom Home, a U.S.-based non-governmental group, ranked Vietnam as “not free” in its 2022 “Freedom within the World” report.

“Freedom of expression, spiritual freedom and civil society activism are tightly restricted,” the group stated within the report. “The authorities have more and more cracked down on residents’ use of social media and the web to voice dissent and share uncensored data.”

A spokesman at Vietnam’s Ministry of Overseas Affairs disagreed with the evaluation, saying that Freedom Home had given “biased evaluation and prejudice, that are drawn on false details about Vietnam.”

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.