LONDON (AP) – When army generals staged a coup in Myanmar last week, they briefly cut off Internet access in an apparent attempt to stem protests. In Uganda, residents were unable to use Facebook, Twitter and other social media for weeks after a recent election. And in the northern Tigray region of Ethiopia, the internet has been in the midst of a major conflict for months.
Around the world, shutting down the Internet has become an increasingly popular tactic of oppressive and authoritarian regimes and some illiberal democracies. Digital rights groups say governments are using it to stifle differences of opinion, silence opposition voices or disguise human rights violations, raising concerns about restricting freedom of speech.
Regimes often cut online access in response to protests or civil unrest, especially around elections, as they try to keep their power on their own by restricting the flow of information, researchers say. It is the digital equivalent of controlling the local TV and radio station that was part of the pre-internet playbook for despots and rebels.
“Internet shutdowns have been massively underreported or misreported over the years,” said Alp Toker, founder of the Internet monitoring organization Netblocks. The world is beginning to ‘realize what is happening’, while documents of efforts as he has expanded, 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. The shutdowns could range from all-encompassing internet disruptions to blocking social media platforms or severely accelerating internet speeds, the report said.
Internet cuts pose political, economic and humanitarian costs, experts warn. The consequences are exacerbated by COVID-19 blockages that force activities such as school classes online.
The shutdowns highlight a wider battle over Internet control. In the West, attempts to curb social media platforms have raised competitive concerns about restricting free speech and restricting harmful information, sometimes used by authoritarian regimes to justify redress.
In Myanmar, internet access was curtailed for about 24 hours last weekend in an apparent attempt to stave off protests against the army and the detention of leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her allies. By Sunday afternoon, Internet users had reported that data on their cell phones had been suddenly restored.
The Norwegian Telenor ASA, which operates one of the most important wireless airlines in Myanmar, said the Ministry of Communications had quoted ‘spreading false news, stability of the country and the public interest’ to order operators to temporarily suspend networks close.
Telenor said it must comply with local laws. “We deplore the impact the closure has on the people of Myanmar,” he said.
It is a well-known step by the government of Myanmar, which has carried out one of the world’s longest internet shutdowns in Rakhine and Chin states to disrupt the activities of an armed ethnic group. The cut-off point started in June 2019 and was only lifted on 3 February.
Another long-running internet shutdown is in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, which has been suffocated since the start of the fighting in early November – the latest in a series of outages, without any service returning any time soon. This made it a challenge to know how many civilians were killed, to what extent the fighting continued and whether people were starting to die of starvation, as some had warned.
In Uganda, restrictions on social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, came into force ahead of a presidential election on January 14, along with a total internet disruption on the eve of the ballot box. Authorities said it was to prevent opposition supporters from organizing potentially dangerous street protests.
The restraining order on social media was lifted on Wednesday, except for Facebook. The longtime leader, Yoweri Museveni, who faced his biggest challenge to date from popular singer and legislator Bobi Wine, was angry about the removal of the social network before the vote on what he said were false accounts that linked to his party.
In Belarus, the internet dropped 61 hours after the presidential election on August 9, which was Europe’s first internet eclipse. The service was cut short after the election results handed over to authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, but the vote was widely regarded as rude and caused huge protests. Access remained unstable for months, especially around protests over the weekend, when mobile internet service declined repeatedly.
The risk is that regular shutdowns will be normalized, Toker said.
“You get a kind of Pavlovian response where both the public in the country and the wider international community will become insensitive to these closures,” he said, calling it “the greatest risk to our collective freedom in the digital age”.
Internet blockades are also common in democratic India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is increasingly using them to target its political opposition. His Hindu nationalist government has ordered hundreds of regional closures, according to a tracking website..
Most were in the disputed Kashmir, which endured an 18-month blockade of high-speed mobile service that ended last week. But they have also been deployed elsewhere for protests against the government, including massive farmers’ protests that have plagued Modi’s government.
“It used to be authoritarian governments that did this, but we’re seeing the practice become more common in democracies like India,” said Darrell West, an airline chair of management studies at the Brookings Institution, who studied Internet shutdown..
‘The risk is that once one democracy does, others will be tempted to do the same. It may start at the 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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