According the the Open Net Initiative, Ethiopia has the second lowest number of internet users in Sub-Sahara Africa. Only .4% of the population has access and uses the internet in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government has used substantial filtering for blogs and newspapers that are reporting against the current political reign. Although they want all of this information filtered, it is not comprehensive, and therefore, relatively easy to get around the filtering and still get to the banned sites. The struggle for personal freedom is very present in Ethiopia, as you will even be sent to jail if an official finds out that you are gay. Even though the internet usage is low, it is still rising, which is why the government has spread their controlling wings onto the internet. The Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporations has a country wide monopoly on all broadband access. They have been known to unblock some sites for a few hours, and then block them again. This has been said to "confuse" the Ethiopian people so they believe there is just a glitch on the websites end. Blogging in particular has been banned, and there is currently no access to the entirety of blogspot.com. So, basically what I am saying is that the censorship in Ethiopia is spotty, they do not have a great handle on it, but at the same time, it is still there.
This is an article that i found on global voices that discusses how in the upcoming elections, activist groups are turning to new media such as facebook and twitter to aid in their campaigns.
In looking up more about popular Ethiopian sites I found this website that gave a list. http://www.cyberethiopia.com/net/docs/internet_repression_in_ethiopia.html
ReplyDeleteIn addition I visited the first site http://www.cyberethiopia.com/home/
This site had different blog posts and was very interesting in the conversations going on. The original site said that this ethiopian site is actually blocked in the country, which is ironic because it is the #1 Ethiopian site. It is also sad that there is so much blockage within that country. I found that the most interesting aspect to the comments on the site are that the country's people cling the religion over anything else because that is the most uncontrolled freedom they have (still not much).
It seems wrong to cause "glitches" to confuse the Ethiopian people. I wonder why blogging is a big concern. The government just does not want anyone speaking his/her mind at all I guess.
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