LONDON (AP) – When army generals in Myanmar took a coup last week, they briefly cut off Internet access in an apparent attempt to prevent protests. In Uganda, residents were unable to use Facebook, Twitter and other social media for weeks after a recent election. And in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, the internet has been down for months amid a broader conflict.
Around 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 use them to suppress dissent, silence opposition voices or cover up human rights abuses, raising concerns about restricting freedom of expression.
Regimes often cut off online access in response to protests or civil unrest, especially around elections, while trying to maintain control of power by restricting the flow of information, researchers say. It is the digital equivalent of taking control of the local TV and radio station that was part of the pre-internet manual for despots and rebels.
“Internet shutdowns have been reported insufficiently or incorrectly over the years,” said Alp Toker, founder of the Internet monitoring organization Netblocks. The world is “starting to see what’s going on,” as efforts like yours expand, he said.
Last year, there were 93 major internet outages in 21 countries, according to a report from Top10VPN, a UK-based digital security and privacy research group. The list does not include places like China and North Korea, where the government controls or severely restricts the internet. Shutdowns can range from comprehensive internet blackouts to blocking social media platforms or severely slowing down the internet, the report said.
Internet cuts have political, economic and humanitarian costs, experts warned. The effects are exacerbated by the COVID-19 blocks that are forcing activities like online classes.
The shutdowns highlight a broader battle for control of the Internet. In the West, efforts to control social media platforms have raised competing concerns about restricting freedom of expression and limiting harmful information, the latter sometimes used by authoritarian regimes to justify repression.
In Myanmar, internet access was cut for around 24 hours last weekend, in an apparent attempt to prevent protests against the seizure of power by the army and the arrest of leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her allies. On Sunday afternoon, Internet users reported that access to data on their cell phones was suddenly restored.
Norwegian Telenor ASA, which runs one of Myanmar’s leading wireless operators, said the communications ministry cited “the circulation of fake news, the country’s stability and public interest” in ordering operators to temporarily close the networks.
Telenor said it needed to comply with local laws. “We deeply regret the impact that the strike has had on the people of Myanmar,” said the document.
It is a well-known movement by the government of Myanmar, which has carried out one of the longest Internet shutdowns in the states of Rakhine and Chin, with the aim of disrupting the operations of an armed ethnic group. The cut started in June 2019 and was only suspended on February 3.
Another long-standing stoppage of the internet has occurred in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, which has been stifled since fighting began in early November – the latest in a series of disruptions with no sign of returning service soon. This makes it difficult to know how many civilians were killed, the extent to which fighting continues or whether people are beginning to starve, as some have warned.
In Uganda, restrictions on social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, took effect before the January 14 presidential election, along with a total blackout of the internet on the eve of the vote. Authorities said it was to prevent opposition supporters from organizing potentially dangerous street protests.
Restrictions on social media were lifted on Wednesday, except for Facebook. Longtime leader Yoweri Museveni, who was facing his biggest challenge to power with popular singer-turned-lawmaker Bobi Wine, was irritated by the removal of the social network before voting on what he said were fake accounts linked to his party.
In Belarus, the internet went down 61 hours after the August 9 presidential election, marking the first internet blackout in Europe. The service was cut after the election results gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko victory, but the vote was widely viewed as fraudulent and sparked huge protests. Access remained unstable for months, especially around the weekend protests, when the mobile internet service crashed repeatedly.
The risk is that regular shutdowns will become normal, said Toker.
“You get a kind of Pavlovian response in which both the public in the country and the international community in general become insensitive to these stoppages,” he said, calling them “the greatest risk to our collective freedom in the digital age”.
Shutting down the Internet is also common in democratic India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government increasingly uses them to combat his political opposition. His Hindu nationalist government has ordered hundreds of regional shutdowns, according to a tracking website.
Most are in disputed Kashmir, which suffered an 18-month block on the high-speed mobile service that ended last week. But they were also deployed elsewhere for anti-government demonstrations, including protests by mass farmers who shook the Modi government.
“It used to be authoritarian governments that did this, but we are seeing the practice become more common in democracies like India,” said Darrell West, chief executive of governance studies at Brookings Institution, who studied internet shutdowns.
“The risk is that, once one democracy does, others will be tempted to do the same. It can start at the local level to deal with the 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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