ENNEMIS of the INTERNET / 12 MARch 2012 / world day against Cyber censorship//////////////////////////// 45
messages of support from people contacted on-site. Most of them who could be reached were so frightened that they just listened. But the important thing is that the message got through. The announced goal was to call 5% of Eritrea’s more than 230,000 telephone lines. Yemane Gebreab, the President’s top political advisor, and leader of the incumbent party, was cornered after being spotted in a Manhattan pub by young Eritreans who wanted to question him about people gone missing in the country, and who criticized his support of the dictator. The event was filmed, posted on YouTube, and – to the authorities’ consternation – relayed by thousands of members. According to Awate.com, various forms of the video1 have been viewed tens of thousands of times : a hard blow for the regime’s propaganda machine.
Start of a cyberwar? The government is still waging an online offensive against such criticisms. Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu, and Yemane Gebreab, are coordinating online propaganda, disinformation initiatives on the Internet, cyberattacks against opposition sites, and crackdowns and pressure on the regime’s opponents. They have decided to occupy the social networks’ terrain and to confront their opponents there by disseminating their own proregime messages. One of the Facebook pages concerned is Eritrea First2, which, as of early March 2012, boasts 2,500 friends and whose motto is “The nation always comes first.” An unprecedented wave of cyberattacks3 struck several websites critical of the regime in early December 2011. Most of the opposition sites, including Assenna.com, Awate.com, Asmarino.com, were blocked for several days. Hackers allegedly attacked these sites’ databases in a vain attempt to delete their archives, but pro-government sites such as Meskerem.net, Alenalki.com, and Dehai.org were spared – a new censorship episode with which it would be difficult not to connect the Asmaran regime. These attacks were perfectly timed, when the targeted sites were speculating on the President’s end-of-year speech, and the UN Security Council was broadening the sanctions imposed on Eritrea4 for its presumed support of Somalia’s Islamist insurgents.
1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rHKA-idvG8 2 https://www.facebook.com/eritreafirst 3 http://awate.com/awate-com-was-hacked/ 4 http://www.france24.com/fr/20111205-nouvelles-sanctionserythree-afrique-conseil-securite-onu