Lawyers in Chad on Thursday presented an application to the courts seeking an order to force government to lift a social media blackout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the Appeals Court struck out the case allowing the government to continue the blackout which has been in force since March 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a year now, Chadians are unable to use particular social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. The state says these applications have helped to organize anti-government protests which in turn threaten internal security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The blockade was imposed when a national conference recommended changes to the constitution to allow president Idriss Deby Itno to continue in office until 2033.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite repeated calls by internet rights groups for the ban to be lifted, the government has serially dismissed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chad is not the only African country to have switched off the internet for political and security reasons. Gabon did so briefly in the face of a coup attempt early this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sudan, currently suffering anti-government protests imposed a similar measure but has since restored the signal. Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, cut signal after the December 2018 polls. It was only restored after a president was declared in the person of Felix Tshisekedi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lawyers in Chad on Thursday presented an application to the courts seeking an order to force government to lift a social media blackout. But the Appeals Court struck out the case allowing the government to continue the blackout which has been in force since March 2018. For a year now, Chadians are unable to use particular social media platform such… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[149,150,151],"class_list":["post-3502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-chad","tag-media-blackout","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3503,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3502\/revisions\/3503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}