Vietnam president pledges reform, defends crackdown

Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang said Thursday Hanoi was trying to reform the country's political system, as he faced questions in Copenhagen over the country's crackdown on bloggers. "Besides economic evolvement we are trying to put in place a better platform for the political life of the people," Sang said. "I think there is no such thing as a perfect system. Every system must reform itself for development... we will continue to improve the situation in Vietnam," he added. The president was speaking at a joint press conference with Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt during a three-day state visit to Denmark, one of Vietnam's largest donors of foreign aid. The Scandinavian country is hoping to leverage that relationship for business opportunities as the Vietnamese economy grows. But in a country that prides itself on a high level of freedom of speech, those plans have come under fire after Hanoi began a crackdown on freedom of expression in late 2009. Vietnam bans private media and all newspapers and television channels are state-run. Lawyers, bloggers and activists are regularly subject to arbitrary arrest and detention, according to rights groups. Last month, a prize-winning investigative journalist who made his name exposing corruption in the communist country was arrested on suspicion of taking bribes. Reporters Without Borders said in July that Vietnam was second only to China in the number of bloggers it detained. The Vietnam president admitted that his country's political system had "defects", but insisted that "everybody... is equal before the law," and said there were "four million free bloggers in Vietnam".