Ethiopian News Website Blocked

By: Qichen Zhang on 27 April 2012
Posted in Ethiopia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Take-down, Political filtering

The leading independently-owned Ethiopian news website The Reporter has been blocked for the past five days, as Reporters Without Borders noted on their blog. Since April 21 at around 4:30, the website has been inaccessible to anyone within the country. Authorities including Ethio-Telecom have yet to provide an explanation, despite RWB's probes into the situation. The Media Communication Centre, the publisher of the news site, also has yet to receive any response from the national telecom organization.

This is the first time that such a widely read and significant news website has been blocked in the country, though the government has a history of blocking access to blogs, news sites, and the websites of dissident political parties, among other types of content.