LONDON (AP) – When army generals in Myanmar staged a coup last week, they briefly halted internet access in an apparent attempt to thwart protests. In Uganda, residents were unable to use Facebook, Twitter and other social media for weeks after recent elections. And in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, the internet has been at a standstill for months amid greater conflict.
Across the world, shutting down the Internet has become an increasingly popular tactic of repressive and authoritarian regimes and some illiberal democracies. Digital rights groups say governments are using them to suppress dissent, silence opposition voices or cover up human rights violations, raising concerns about restrictions on freedom of expression.
Regimes often cut off online access in response to protests or civil unrest, especially around elections, as they try to keep a grip on power by limiting the flow of information, researchers say. It is the digital equivalent of control of the local TV and radio station that was part of the pre-Internet playbook for despots and rebels.
“Internet shutdowns have been hugely underreported or incorrectly reported over the years,” said Alp Toker, founder of Internet monitoring organization Netblocks. The world “is beginning to realize what is happening,” as it documents efforts such as its expansion, he said.
Last year, there were 93 major internet outages in 21 countries, according to a report by Top10VPN, a UK digital privacy and security research group. The list does not include places like China and North Korea, where the government strictly controls or restricts the internet. Shutdowns can range from all-inclusive internet outages to blocking social media platforms or severely throttling internet speeds, the report said.
Internet cuts have political, economic and humanitarian costs, experts warned. The effects are exacerbated by COVID-19 lockdowns that force activities such as school classes online.
The shutdowns indicate a broader battle for control of the internet. In the West, efforts to rein in social media platforms have raised competing concerns about restricting freedom of expression and restricting harmful information, which is sometimes used by authoritarian regimes to justify oppression.
In Myanmar, internet access was cut for about 24 hours last weekend in an apparent effort to avoid protests against the military’s takeover and the detention of leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her allies. On Sunday afternoon, internet users reported that data access on their cell phones had suddenly been restored.
Norwegian Telenor ASA, which operates one of Myanmar’s major wireless providers, said the Ministry of Communications referred to “the spread of fake news, the stability of the nation and public interest” by ordering operators to temporarily shut down networks. .
Telenor said it had to comply with local laws. “We deeply regret the impact the shutdown is having on the people of Myanmar,” he said.
It is a well-known move by the government of Myanmar, which carried out one of the longest internet stops in the world in Rakhine and Chin states, aimed at disrupting the activities of an armed ethnic group. The closure began in June 2019 and was not lifted until February 3.
Another long-term shutdown of the internet is in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which has been stifled since the fighting began in early November – the latest in a string of outages with no signs of a rapid return of service. That made it challenging to know how many civilians have been killed, to what extent the fighting continues, and whether people are starting to starve to death, as some have warned.
In Uganda, restrictions on social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, went into effect ahead of the January 14 presidential election, along with a total internet blackout on the eve of the election. Authorities said it was intended to prevent opposition supporters from staging potentially dangerous street protests.
The social media curbs were lifted Wednesday, except for Facebook. Longtime leader Yoweri Museveni, who faced his biggest power challenge to date from popular singer and lawmaker Bobi Wine, was upset about the social network’s removal before voting on fake accounts linked to his party.
In Belarus, the internet went out for 61 hours after the presidential election on 9 August, marking the first internet outage in Europe. The service was dropped after the election results handed the victory to authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, but the vote was widely seen as falsified and sparked huge protests. Access remained unstable for months, especially around weekend protests, when the mobile internet service went down repeatedly.
The risk is that regular shutdowns will be normalized, Toker said.
“You’re getting a kind of Pavlovian response where both the public in the country and the wider international community will become impervious to these shutdowns,” he said, calling it the “greatest risk to our collective freedom in the digital age.”
Internet shutdowns are also common in democratic India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is increasingly using them to target his political opposition. His Hindu nationalist government has ordered hundreds of regional shutdowns, according to a tracking site.
Most have been to disputed Kashmir, which passed an 18-month blockade of high-speed mobile services last week. But they have also been deployed elsewhere for anti-government demonstrations, including massive peasant protests that have upset Modi’s government.
“It used to be authoritarian governments that did this, but we see the practice becoming more common in democracies such as India,” said Darrell West, vice president of governance studies at Brookings Institution, who has studied Internet shutdown..
“The risk is that once one democracy does it, the other will be tempted to do the same. It may start at a local level to deal with unrest, but then spread more widely. “
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Cara Anna in Nairobi, Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda, Aijaz Hussain in Srinigar, India, and Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi contributed to this report.
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