Thread by @WhoseKnowledge

How can we talk about governance & internet access where #InternetShutdowns are being used as a tool for genocide?

This year’s @intgovforum is taking place in Ethiopia, a country that continues to weaponize internet shutdowns against the people in #Tigray 🧵 #IGF2022

For years, the Ethiopian government has relied on its dominance as a telecom & internet provider to cut groups out of the web, and hide war crimes and #HumanRights violations.

Since 2020, it has engineered the longest continuous internet shutdown in the world, keeping Tigrayans isolated in the middle of a war that has cost their livelihood and lives. #KeepItOn

It is ironic - and an act of complicity - that a major global forum on internet access and policies #IGF2022 chooses Ethiopia as a venue, after years of violence and repression against Tigrayans, including blockages to humanitarian aid. #KeepItOn

Tigrayan voices should be at the center of discussions about a safe and free internet, yet these voices and the facts of #InternetShutdowns in #Tigray are deliberately excluded from IGF conversations. #IGF2022 needs to be accountable for its role in silencing these voices.

At WK?, we are boycotting #IGF2022 — a position that isn’t held by many friends and allies. But the most important voices to be centered are not ours. #TigrayCantWait

So, instead of being at IGF, we held space today for Tigrayan activists to tell the world why the #InternetShutdown is also a shutdown of life for Tigray. #KeepItOn #IGF2022

We co-organized a solidarity panel to hold and amplify the leadership and knowledge of Tigrayan activists and be witnesses to their pain, anger, and disappointment. Here are some takeaways. 🔽

Melat Habtu (@Melhabtu), an activist in the advocacy team of the Tigray Youth Network, highlights the surface level of engagement that many states and civil society organizations — beyond #IGF2022 — have with the genocide in #Tigray.

Mulu Beyene (@MuluBK), a Tigrayan lawyer who has taught human rights & international humanitarian law, explains how #ReconnectTigray goes beyond access to the internet. “It’s much more than a communication barrier. It affects your health, [the] livelihood of people in many ways”.

Selam G (@SelamGYi) calls for more voices — policymakers, feminist organizations, civil society, and governments — to speak up and push for measures on the ground to #ReconnectTigray. Instead, many organizations participate in “covering such heinous crimes.”

These activists live in constant pain and uncertainty about their family and friends in Tigray. The only way they hear from them is through rare audio notes, because of the #InternetShutdown. We will share more from these extraordinary activists over the next few days.

Right now, the most immediate action of solidarity we can take is to share what is happening in #Tigray (and other parts of Ethiopia), and ask those at #IGF2020 to take responsibility for their inactions and silences.

Today’s #IGF2022 main session, #ConnectingAllPeople & safeguarding #HumanRights, failed to address the urgent connectivity in #Tigray by listing women, marginalized communities, and ethnic and religious minorities without naming Tigray — this is beyond irresponsible.

If the internet is a public good and a human right, as some panel speakers noted, then universal access to all citizens in Ethiopia is non-negotiable #TigrayCantWait.

Re-watch this session:


#SDG10 #SDG9 #SDG8

The complicity of human rights defenders, policy advocates, and feminist advocates regarding the internet shutdown in Tigray at #IGF2022 is one way in which #InternetShutdowns and human rights violations in many countries, including Ethiopia, are sustained.

For more information on what is happening, see this article for @TghatMedia, by Tigrayan researcher @TeklehaymanotG. They explain how the @intgovforum taking place in Ethiopia is ignoring and silencing the brutal shutdown and repression in #Tigray

tghat.com/2022/11/29/the…

We say this with care and love to our feminist friends and tech justice allies who are at #IGF2022. Funding and partnerships, esp. in the Global South, often rely on participating in these international conferences, but we can do better by Tigray, in solidarity. #ReconnectTigray

As we #DecolonizetheInternet & work towards a #feministInternet, especially as marginalized folks from the Global Majority world, let’s hold ourselves & our own governments accountable. Colonial technologies shouldn’t be replicated on our own peoples. Let’s do better, together.

As we point out these hard truths with solidarity and love to the larger feminist digital rights community, let’s continue centering and let us be guided by wonderful activists from #Tigray @MuluBK @Melhabtu @SelamGYi 👇🏾

Despite open letters + articles written about the Tigrayan genocide, #IGF2022 was still held in Ethiopia. This is an endorsement of what the Ethiopian government is doing, says @SelamGYi, and “it is disgraceful to see such a well-reputed forum organized in Ethiopia.” #KeepItOn

Apologists for the genocide have accused Tigrayan activists of “misinformation”. But it is the Ethiopian govt that’s involved in destroying the evidence – first-person testimonies – of atrocities in the region through weaponizing internet shutdowns. Hear more from @Melhabtu. ⬇️

The silencing and lack of accountability for the crimes happening in #Tigray show how “laws and institutions, how the world basically functions, [are] an instance of how unjust the world is,” says Tigrayan lawyer (@MuluBK). #TigrayCantWait #IGF2022

#IGF2022 may be at an end, but we must continue pushing for concrete actions to end the #InternetShutdown in #Tigray & calling out its dire consequences; not silencing them. We must support, center, and affirm Tigrayan voices and narratives as we #DecolonizeTheInternet together