NAIROBI, Kenya – President Yoweri Museveni of the Ugandan president blocked Facebook from operating in his country, just days after the social media company removed fake accounts linked to his government before a heavily contested general election scheduled to take place on Thursday. market.
In a televised speech on Tuesday night, Museveni accused Facebook of “arrogance” and said he instructed his government to close the platform, along with other media, although Facebook was the only one he cited.
“This social channel you are talking about, if it is going to work in Uganda, should be used equitably by everyone who needs to use it,” said Museveni. “We cannot tolerate this arrogance of someone coming to decide for us who is good and who is bad,” he added.
The Facebook ban comes at the end of an electoral period that was marked by repression of political opposition, harassment of journalists and protests across the country that have resulted in at least 54 deaths and hundreds of arrests, officials said.
Museveni, 76, who is running for the sixth term, faces 10 rivals, including lawmaker rapper Bobi Wine, 38. Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, was beaten and sprayed with tear gas and accused in court of allegedly disrespecting women. coronavirus rules during the campaign.
Last week, Wine filed a complaint to the International Criminal Court accusing Museveni and other senior and former security officials of sanctioning a wave of violence and human rights violations against citizens, political figures and human rights lawyers.
Facebook announced this week that it had taken down a network of accounts and pages in the East African country that was engaging in what it called “coordinated inauthentic behavior” with the aim of manipulating public debate around the election. The company said the network is linked to the Government’s Citizen Interaction Center, an initiative that is part of Uganda’s Ministry of Information and Communication Technology and National Guidance.
In a statement, a Facebook representative said the network “used fake and duplicate accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, share posts in groups to make them appear more popular than they were” .
Facebook’s investigation of the network began after a survey by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Laboratory featured a network of social media accounts that engaged in a campaign to criticize the opposition and promote Museveni and the government party, the Movement. of National Resistance. After the survey was published, Twitter also said it closed accounts linked to the election.
Hours before Museveni’s speech, social media users in Uganda confirmed the restrictions on their online communications, with digital rights group NetBlocks reporting that platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter were affected.
On Wednesday, MTN Uganda, the country’s largest telecommunications company, confirmed that it had received a directive from the Uganda Communications Commission to “suspend access and use, direct or otherwise, of all social media platforms and online messages over the network until further notice ”.
Felicia Anthonio, an activist with the non-profit digital rights organization Access Now, said authorities blocked more than 100 virtual private networks, or VPNs, that could help users bypass censorship and browse the Internet safely.
Uganda blocked the Internet during the 2016 elections and, in 2018, introduced a social media tax aimed at increasing revenue and containing what the government called “online gossip”. The move, which was criticized as a threat to freedom of expression, had a negative effect on Internet use in general, with millions of Ugandans giving up their Internet services.
Anticipating another strike this week, a group of organizations working to end internet cuts worldwide sent a letter to Mr. Museveni and the leaders of telecommunications companies in Uganda begging them to keep the internet and social media platforms accessible during the election.
Mr. Museveni did not answer the call. On Tuesday night, he said the decision to block Facebook was “unfortunate” but “inevitable”.
“I am very sorry for the inconvenience,” he said, adding that he himself has been using the platform to interact with young voters. He has almost a million followers on Facebook and two million on Twitter.
In a defiant tone, Museveni said that if Facebook were to “take sides”, then it would not be allowed to operate in the country.
“Uganda is ours,” he said.