Global Voices Uganda: Government Attempts to Block Facebook, Twitter as Protests Continue

I posted about this yesterday, but I just put together a longer piece for Global Voices in which I’ve tried to give a bit more context for the protests:

As opposition politicians and others angry over rising fuel and food prices in Uganda continue to stage walk to work protests against the current regime, the government is asking Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut down access to Facebook and Twitter.

According to the World Bank, a lengthy drought and a spike in fuel prices are wreaking havoc across East Africa. In Uganda, Timothy Hatcher at aaralinuga describes the situation:

Inflation has pretty much doubled over the past month to 11.1 percent, and fuel prices have risen by over 50 percent; prices are approaching $7.00 per gallon. Major impact: prices of some staple foods have tripled since December.

Angela Kintu explains how higher prices are affecting families:

…this protest is about reality, frustration and desperate times. I am buying a litre of Ugandan made and grown cooking oil for sh6,500 [$2.73]. I am paying sh3,600 [$1.51] for a litre of fuel. A tomato has gone up to sh300 [$0.12] at the very least. I don’t know about you, but that is breaking my budget. No one is paying me any more money for my work – in fact, I am chasing debtors left, right and centre. In one short week, Easter and school holidays will be upon me. Three short weeks after that, I must rustle up school fees and requirements.

These economic issues have provided a foothold for opposition leaders who have struggled to garner support since losing the February 2011 presidential election to long-time incumbent Yoweri Museveni.

Read the full post: Uganda: Government Attempts to Block Facebook, Twitter as Protests Continue

Ugandan Government Asks ISPs to Block Facebook, Twitter

Cross-posted on the OpenNet Initiative

A copy of the blocking request letter, via @kasujja on Twitter

With the exception of Ethiopia, which blocks a number of political and security-related websites, and a few cases of isolated Internet censorship related to political events, most of sub-Saharan Africa has historically been free of technical filtering. This week, however, the government of Uganda wrote to the heads of three of the country’s major ISPs asking them to block Facebook and “Tweeter” [sic] “to eliminate the connection and sharing of information that incites the public.”

The request comes on the heels of a week of opposition protests over rising fuel and food prices. The protests have been widely advertised on Twitter using the hashtag #walk2work, and opposition leaders Kizza Besigye and Norbert Mao, among others, have been repeatedly arrested.

Several contacts in Uganda are reporting that, as of Monday, the sites are accessible, though one contact reports that both Facebook and Twitter were temporarily inaccessible through Uganda Telecom on Friday. Uganda’s Observer newspaper is reporting that access has been suspended.

Last week, Uganda’s Commissioner of Police called for the government to “guard against misuse of communication networks to protect social values and national identity,” pointing to the Ugandans at Heart blog, which covers political and social issues in the country, and associated Google Group as examples of sites that “pose a serious national security threat if their net publications are not regulated.”

Global Voices Uganda: #walk2work Arrests Spur Hunger Strike, Future Protests

Twitter’s abuzz with news of the #walk2work protests staged by Ugandan opposition leaders Kizza Besigye and Norbert Mao on Monday. Ndesanjo Macha’s round up of tweets provides an excellent overview; my latest Global Voices post continues the story:

Rather than backing down after the arrest of two Ugandan opposition leaders for staging a “Walk to Work” protest against high fuel and food prices on Monday, Ugandan activists have responded by announcing a hunger strike and planning more demonstrations.

Read the full post: Uganda: #walk2work Arrests Spur Hunger Strike, Future Protests

FOIA…and Rick Astley

As I’ve talked to technology for transparency activists over the past year, one thing that’s repeatedly come up is the importance of traditional transparency tools — partnering with the mainstream media to get the word out tends to be more effective than going it alone with phones and websites, for example. One key aspect of this “old school” activism is the use of freedom of or right to information laws (FOIA/RTI) in different countries — officially requisitioning information from the government. This doesn’t always work, of course; bureaucratic processes often draw out the process interminably, and some governments simply don’t have the capacity to keep track of the kinds of data transparency activists would like.

Today, I stumbled across of the best uses of public record requests I’ve seen since I’ve started paying attention to this field. Thank you, Oregon House of Representatives, for this gem, created with the help of a public records request for hours of film of the February 2010 legislative session:

More information on how this beauty came to be, and the role that public records requests played, here: How one Oregon lawmaker convinced his colleagues to ‘Rick Roll’ the state legislature

Thoughts from the Al Jazeera Forum

I’m spending this weekend at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, where I was asked to participate in a seminar on the role of the blogosphere in bringing social and political change. The question posed to us — Hisham Almiraat, Mohamed Najem, Georgia Popplewell, Ramsey Tesdell, Nasser Weddady, and myself — revolved around the article Malcom Gladwell published in the New Yorker last month claiming that online connections are purely weak ties and that social media are therefore incapable of creating or sustaining a social movement.

I side with those — David Weinberger, Zeynep Tunecki, and others — who have responded to Gladwell by saying that attempting to cleanly separate online and offline media (or connections, or actions) is a futile pursuit. Social media are an integral part of a new media ecosystem, one in which bloggers are amplified and inspired by more traditional forms of media and in which mainstream media outlets increasingly partner with citizen journalists to provide the most complete coverage they can.

Throughout the forum, panelists have repeatedly raised this theme, arguing that framing media as old versus new or mainstream versus citizen is not a productive approach to understanding the impact of online networks. Speakers who work with major news outlets have thanked bloggers for sharing their first-hand accounts of what’s happening on the ground, while bloggers have thanked major news outlets for broadcasting their reports. In a break-out discussion on Saturday, citizen journalists from Tunisia and Egypt said that Al Jazeera’s amplification of their voices helped bring the situations in these countries to a tipping point.

This idea of a media ecology is one I’ve been mulling over as I’ve been working with the Technology for Transparency Network over the past year. We’ve interviewed more than 60 organizations who use digital tools to promote transparency and accountability in their governments, and one of our key conclusions has been that organizations who build partnerships with traditional media organizations — whether these are local radio stations or major national newspapers — tend to have more success than organizations that rely solely on the Internet to get their message across. For me, it’s been interesting to hear that this is the case not only when talking about city budget transparency, but also when talking about revolutions.

I don’t think this in any way diminishes the importance of social media in the movement for government accountability. In many cases, both local radio stations and national papers (and, as I’ve heard this weekend, Al Jazeera) would be unable to report on the stories they cover without the help of bloggers and tweeters. I’m glad to see that those who are here at the forum — both traditional and citizen journalists — are willing to exlore these partnerships and acknowledge their importance.