14 January 2021
January 14, 2021
The Kenyan based The Elephant, is one of the premier online sources of news analysis in the East African region with a fast-growing readership across the African continent and beyond.
By mid December 2020, The Elephant started to receive complains from users in Uganda, not being able to access their site. With the Ugandan presidential election coming up in January 2021, Qurium suspected that the blocking could be intentional, as a strategy to silence critical voices. Qurium has built a Bifrost mirror for The Elephant.
The Elephant team has reached out to the three Ugandan providers Liquid Telecom (Infocom), Africell (Orange) and Airtel Uganda (Zain) to request information on why their site is blocked. During the 7 days response time given, only Liquid Telecom has responded. The CEO of Liquid Telecom answered promptly “Kindly refer this matter to the Uganda Communications Commission for guidance. ” We interpret his words that Liquid Telecom has been instructed by the UCC to block the Elephant. The Elephant has tried to reach UCC to receive a formal answer, but they have not yet responded.
Qurium forensics report: Uganda blocks Kenyan news ahead of the presidential elections
The Elephant report:
https://www.theelephant.info/op-eds/2021/01/14/uganda-elections-2021-the-elephant-website-blocked-ahead-of-poll/
Bifrost mirror:
https://storage.googleapis.com/qurium/theelephant.info/index.html
Contacts:
Digital forensics: Tord Lundström, Qurium Media Foundation t@virtualroad.org
Media: Clara Zid, Qurium Media Foundation info@virtualroad.org