Ethiopia blocks social media sites over exam leak

Government blocks Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Viber after exam papers were leaked online last month.

Ethiopia blocks social media sites over exam leak

The block on social media sites will remain in place until exams finish on Wednesday, according government officials [Reuters]The block on social media sites will remain in place until exams finish on Wednesday, according government officials [Reuters]

Ethiopia has blocked social media sites across the country after questions from end-of-year university exams were posted online last month, sparking a national scandal.

The online leak of national of the exam sheets, which many have called an embarrassment for the government, forced the tests to be postponed.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Viber have been inaccessible in the Horn of Africa’s most populous country since Saturday morning and will continue to be so until the national school examinations are concluded on Wednesday, according to government officials.

A government spokesman said the ban was aimed at stopping students taking university entrance exams this week from being “distracted”.

“It’s blocked. It’s a temporary measure until Wednesday. Social media have proven to be a distraction for students,” government spokesman Getachew Reda told AFP news agency.

Ethiopia is one of the first African countries to censor the internet, beginning in 2006 with opposition blogs, according to experts.

Prominent blogger Daniel Berhane denounced the move as a “dangerous precedent”.

“There’s no transparency on who decides why it’s necessary or who decides for how long,” he said.

“This time it’s for a few days but next time it could be for months… They’re flexing their muscles. They got multiple tools and they’re testing them.” Berhane said
Last week, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning the blocking of internet as a human rights violation.

Some 254,000 students are expected to sit the national examination, according to the ministry of education.

Source: Al Jazeera Agencies

Ethiopia blocks social media sites

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Viber affected in clampdown.

Tuesday July 12 2016

The logo of the messaging app WhatsApp and the logo of social networking site Facebook on a smartphone. Ethiopia has blocked social media sites across the country after university entrance examinations were posted online. PHOTO | AFP

The government said the ban was to prevent students from being distracted from studying during the examination period and to prevent the spread of false rumours.
Ethiopia was among the first African countries to censor the internet and opposition blogs and human rights websites are frequently blocked.
In May, university entrance examinations were cancelled after pictures of the test circulated on social media.

ADDIS ABABA

Ethiopia has blocked social media sites across the country after university entrance examinations were posted online.

The government said the ban was to prevent students from being distracted from studying during the examination period and to prevent the spread of false rumours.

The blocked sites included Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Viber.

They will be unavailable for several days while university entrance examinations are taken, a government spokesman said.

“It’s a temporary measure until Wednesday. Social media have proven to be a distraction for students,” said spokesman Getachew Reda.

Ethiopia was among the first African countries to censor the internet and opposition blogs and human rights websites are frequently blocked.

Social media sites have gone down in Ethiopia before but only for a matter of hours, with the government previously denying any involvement. This is the first time social media sites have been publicly blocked nationwide.

An Ethiopian journalist, who has covered the story but who did not want to be named for safety reasons, told the BBC that the clampdown “was just the beginning”.

CONTROL SOCIAL MEDIA

“The government here is very keen to control social media,” he said. “They will learn from this, next time there is a protest they will use the experience to do another nationwide clampdown,” said the journalist.

Daniel Berhane, the editor of Horn Affairs magazine, said on Twitter: “This is a dangerous precedent. There is no transparency about who took the decision and for how long.”

In May, university entrance examinations were cancelled after pictures of the test circulated on social media. A group supporting protests for greater rights for Ethiopia’s Oromo people claimed responsibility for the leak.

Traditional media in Ethiopia are tightly controlled by the government, leaving many reliant on social media to access and pass on information critical of the authorities.

Last week, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution classifying the censorship of the internet as a human rights violation.

In 2012, Skype was taken down in Ethiopia amid a clampdown on VoIP (voice over internet protocol) calls. The government claimed that the service was being used for fraudulent purposes.

That year, campaigners warned of fresh efforts in Ethiopia to clamp down on certain types of internet use. Reporters Without Borders said the authorities had installed a system to block access to the Tor network – a “hidden” layer of the internet, used to allow anonymous online communications.

Users faced up to 15 years in jail if they used Skype or similar internet call services. Addis Ababa said it was only illegal to use Skype “for fraudulent activities”.

“The Ethiopian government is trying to attack every means of information exchange,” Ambroise Pierre from the Reporters Without Borders Africa said then. “There’s already a very strict control over written press.”
Source – Daily Nation

Ethiopia blocks social media sites over exam leak