Vietnam Tells Netflix to Remove TV Series

The Vietnamese Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information under the Ministry of Information and Communications confirmed that Netflix the American owned giant onstream service, last week had removed “Pine Gap”, a six-part TV series.

According to Vietnam News apparently, the reason given was that the series had images infringing on Vietnam’s sovereignty over the sea and islands.

The department discovered the wrongful representation of Vietnam’s sovereignty in episodes of the TV series, produced by Australia's ABC and released on the Netflix digital movie platform in Vietnam.

Specifically, the image of a map with the illegal nine-dash line in the East Sea (known internationally as the South China Sea) appeared in the second and third episodes of the series.

Pine Gap is an Australian television series that was released on Netflix and broadcast on ABC in 2018. The six-part series is written and created by Greg Haddrick and Felicity Packard with Mat King directing all six episodes.

The appearance of false information is deemed to have seriously violated Vietnamese law as reported by Vietnam News.

Clauses 3 and 4 in Article 9 of the Press Law along with Clause 4 in Article 11 of the Cinematography Law prohibit the provision of information that incites war, infringes upon Vietnam’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, distorts history, negates revolutionary achievements, or offends the nation and national heroes of Vietnam.

The department immediately sent a document to Netflix requesting it to comply with Vietnamese law when broadcasting television services in the country.

This is the third time over the past 12 months that Netflix has been found to stream movies and TV shows with content that violates Vietnam’s territorial sovereignty when providing services to users in the country.

Earlier, a Chinese series "Put Your Head On My Shoulder" and American series "Madam Secretary" both showed China's nine-dash line violating Vietnam’s sovereignty, and the Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information had immediately issued documents requiring Netflix to remove these movies.

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