Two-Year Internet Outage In Ethiopia Continues

Zecharias Zelalem writes via Reuters: Few have been spared the effects of a nearly two-year internet and phone shutdown in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, which has been cut off since fighting erupted between Tigrayan rebels and government forces in November 2020. The conflict resumed last month after a months-long humanitarian truce, dashing hopes for communications to be restored. Even the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who hails from Tigray, said he had been unable to reach his relatives back home, or send them money. 'I don't know even who is dead or who is alive,' Tedros told a recent news conference in London.

As fighting continues in Tigray and elsewhere in Ethiopia, the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed says shutdowns are needed to curb violence, but critics accuse authorities of using the internet as a weapon of war. 'Access to communications and other basic services, and most importantly humanitarian assistance, is explicitly used as a bargaining chip by the Ethiopian government,' said Goitom Gebreluel, a political analyst specialising in Horn of Africa affairs. 'It is used as leverage against both Tigray and the international community.' In Ethiopia, sporadic internet and phone blackouts have been used as 'a weapon to control and censor information,' the group said, making it difficult for journalists and activists to document alleged rights crimes, and for aid to be delivered.

In Tigray's regional capital, Mekelle, emergency workarounds such as satellite phones have become a vital tool for aid agency operations. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also maintains a satellite phone service for local residents -- giving them a way to get a message to loved ones. So far this year, the ICRC has facilitated some 116,000 phone calls and oral messages 'between family members separated by conflict and violence,' said spokesperson Alyona Synenko. With almost half of the region's six million people in severe need of food, the shutdown as well as road blockades have hampered humanitarian aid deliveries, according to the U.N. World Food Program. The lack of mobile phone networks has also 'crippled both the emergency and regular health monitoring systems,' a WHO spokesperson said in emailed remarks. The only way to communicate is 'via paper reports that need to be delivered by hand. All meetings have to be held in person.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.