Hanoi  - Employees at Vietnamese internet providers confirmed Thursday that the government had ordered their companies to block the social networking site Facebook.

Vietnamese Facebook users had complained of being unable to access the site for days, but officials refused to confirm it had been blocked. Deputy Minister of Information and Telecommunications Do Quy Doan said Tuesday his ministry had not blocked the site.

But employees at two Vietnamese internet providers, FPT and VNPT, told the German Press Agency dpa they had received government orders last week to block Facebook, and had begun implementing the orders this week.

Vietnamese users of the site expressed irritation.

"I feel very strange, and angry," said Dang Huong Tra. "It's just a social network."

"They think some reactionary people are using Facebook to link people together and propagandize against the Vietnamese government," said Facebook user Le Khac Hoan. "So they decided to block it."

Tra said she, like many Vietnamese users, was using proxy servers and other methods to bypass the government's firewall and access the site.

While this was the first time the government was known to have blocked an entire social networking site, Vietnam has taken numerous steps this year to crack down on independent voices in media and the internet.

Early in the year, the government issued a decree ordering bloggers to restrict their online writing to personal concerns. Several political bloggers were arrested in August and September, and a number of bloggers arrested last year were sentenced to prison in October.

The crackdown has led to protests from international rights organizations and to resolutions by the US and European countries calling on Vietnam to allow freedom of expression on the internet. (dpa)