09 Jan 14 | Africa, Digital Freedom
People in territories controlled by al-Shabab are banned from using “mobile internet and fiber optic technology”, the group announced in a radio message and subsequent written statement on Wednesday. Internet service providers have been given 15 days to comply with the ban.
The country’s two main ISPs, Hortel Inc and Nationlink Telecom, had this morning yet to respond to the demands, reports Al Jazeera English. Details on how such a ban would be effectively implemented and enforced, beyond that those found to be in violation of it would be “considered to be working with the enemy” and “dealt with in accordance Sharia law” were not provided.
While al-Shabab has lost some footing in recent times, especially in urban areas, they still hold control in many rural parts in the country. This is not the first time that control has been used to crack down on access to freedom of expression. Late last year, the group banned use of smart phones and satellite TV. Previously, they have banned BBC radio broadcasts.
This latest moved comes not long after news that Somalia is to get high speed internet from 2014.
23 Sep 13 | News and features
From “Africa’s Subversive Litanies” – Robert Fraser, Index on Censorship Magazine, October 1980
In contemporary West Africa the writer’s shell may occasionally be of his own making, the artifact of inhibition or doubt. Often, however, it is made of harder stuff, as Kofi Awoonor, one of Ghana’s senior poets, discovered to his cost. He was detained in 1977 for suspected collusion in an abortive attempt to remove a government which was itself the product of a military uprising.
The extent of Awoonor’s guilt was giving temporary shelter to a fellow Ewe out of favour with the authorities. Yet at his trial thirteen defence barristers failed to secure his release; their evidence was declared inadmissible before the proceedings had even started. Awoonor’s subsequent detention in Usher Fort did little to mitigate the acute political scepticism which had
earlier driven him to seek asylum in America. He captured the feeling with characteristically sardonic sadness in his poem ‘When My New Passport Came and I was given a Year’:
Oh, I know you curse my name
and say that I have fled; you call for
silence from my parched winter lips;
I received the other day your passport
with the one year stamp
and the order that I cannot renew
myself in alien lands.
But I renew myself here
in winter’s beginning day
awaiting the coming of the sun
so that your son will be ready
for the snake-shrouds of homecoming.
04 May 12 | Africa, Index Index, minipost
Somali journalist Farhan Jeemis Abdulle was reportedly murdered by two unidentified men on Wednesday evening in Puntland. According to colleagues of the journalist, he received threats from an anonymous caller days before he was shot and killed on his way home from work. His colleagues allege that the local militant Islamic group Al-Shabab killed him for covering local programmes aimed at discouraging violence in youth. Local police are investigating the murder, but have not made any arrests yet.
