Vietnam says Netflix removes show violating sovereignty laws

Netflix Inc. stopped offering the political TV drama Pine Gap in Vietnam after the government’s Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information said it violated sovereignty laws by depicting a map indicating South China Sea islands are not Vietnamese territory.

“Following a written legal demand from the Vietnamese regulator, we have removed the licensed series, Pine Gap, from Netflix in Vietnam, to comply with local law,” Netflix said in an emailed statement. “It remains available on our service in the rest of the world.”

Vietnamese officials discovered “the misrepresentation of Vietnam’s sovereignty in the second and third episodes of the Pine Gap series released on the Netflix movie platform in Vietnam,” the department said on its website. The episodes feature the so-called nine-dash line in the sea, it said.

China’s nine-dash line claims a vast part of the waters and is contested by Hanoi.

The department said it has flagged Netflix three times during the past 12 months for violations of its sovereignty laws. It also complained about the shows Madam Secretary and Put Your Head On My Shoulder, the department said.

The Southeast Asian country in 2019 ordered theaters to pull the movie “Abominable” over depictions in the film of China’s version of its maritime boundaries with its neighbor in the sea.

By Mai Ngoc Chau & Xuan Quynh Nguyen – Bloomberg – July 2, 2021