International Campaign to bring back Internet in Chad

News update |

Internet Without Borders launches an international campaign against Internet censorship in Chad, to act against the blocking of social media and the high cost of Internet access in this landlocked country located in Central Africa.

Deployed online and offline, the campaign will begin on January 19, 2019 with demonstrations in Paris, N’djamena, a fundraising to purchase VPN access for Chadian Internet users, as well as discussions on social networks on the hashtag #Maalla_Gatétou (note: why did you cut off, in Chadian Arabic), and on Facebook. Every month until June 2019, new actions will be proposed.

Chad is among the worst states in the world with regards to respect of digital rights.Since the disputed re-election in April 2016 of President Idriss Déby, who’s been in power for 29 years, more than 400,000 Chadian Internet users are regularly deprived of normal access to the Internet and social media for political reasons.

In addition to this State censorship, high costs of access to the Internet, and poor quality of the connection are imposed by the telecommunications companies. After a campaign led by Internet Without Borders Chad, the cost of 1GB of connection went from 12000 to 7000fCFA (approx. 11 euros).

 

This article was first published on Internet Sans Frontieres website