Maputo, 28 Oct (AIM) – The Mozambican chapter of the regional press freedom body MISA (Media Institute of Southern Africa) has condemned the mobile internet interruption on Friday to Saturday, claiming that it was intended to limit the exchange of information in the context of the protests against the election results called by the independent presidential candidate, Venancio Mondlane.
According to a MISA statement, after its own investigations, MISA found that there was no access to mobile internet for more than 18 hours across the country.
“Through the verification carried out by Misa Regional at IODA (Internet Outage detection and Analysis), the speed of the Internet in Mozambique was reduced on the afternoon of 25 October, in a context in which the country has been experiencing an environment of violent tension due to the announcement of the election results. We observed that there was Bandwidth throttling”, reads the note.
MISA believes that the mobile phone companies cut Internet access on orders from the government. It claims this was intended not only to limit the freedoms of the press and of expression, but also to limit the exchange of information in the context of the demonstrations against the election results.
“After the violations against the freedom of the press and freedom of expression, through police violence, the government is once again violating freedom of expression by restricting citizens from circulating and exchanging information through digital platforms, as well as limiting business operations and social life, on a day when many Mozambicans are carrying out their activities remotely due to the violence in the streets”, MISA said.
As if to compensate for the Internet shutdown, two of the mobile phone companies, Vodacom and Movitel, have been offering their clients a limited number of gigabytes free of charge.
Even users who do not depend on mobile phones for Internet access have received this surprising offer. This correspondent, for example, was given 2.65 gigabytes – even though he accesses the Internet by cable TV, and had no problems when the mobile Internet went dead.
(AIM)
Ad/pf (344)
