Hello,

Today, OONI and South Sudan's The Advocates for Human Rights and Democracy (TAHURID) published a joint report examining internet censorship in South Sudan.

Our research report is available here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/south-sudan-censorship/

Established in July 2011, South Sudan is the world's youngest nation. The country though is in turmoil in light of ongoing civil war.

OONI and TAHURID joined forces to measure internet censorship locally, particularly following local reports on the blocking of media outlets.

OONI data corroborates these reports, showing the blocking of media outlets Sudan Tribune and Radio Tamazuj, and of Nyamilepedia and Paanluel Wel, the leading blogs of the Nuer and Dinka tribes.

MTN (AS37594) appears to block TCP/IP connections to these sites, while IPTEC (AS36892) blocks access by means of DNS tampering.

We also detected the presence of the Mikrotik HTTP transparent proxy through measurements collected in 2017 from South Sudan's 4G Telecom (AS327786) network. This proxy though is more likely being used to improve connectivity and network performance, than to implement internet censorship.

Based on our testing, internet censorship in South Sudan does not appear to be pervasive, but limited to sites that authorities deem to publish "subversive content" and incite violence. Locals report that the media operate in a state of fear, and most forms of censorship are currently non-digital (involving the intimidation, jailing, and killing of journalists). Self-censorship may therefore be one of the most effective forms of censorship in South Sudan today.

That said, the fact that South Sudan has already started implementing internet censorship raises questions as to whether its internet censorship apparatus will expand as internet penetration levels increase and political events unfold.

Our study shares some initial observations based on OONI network measurements. If you're interested in expanding upon this research, you can do so through the use of OONI Probe (https://ooni.torproject.org/install/) and OONI data (https://ooni.torproject.org/data/).

Please share this study with your contacts: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1024643397766860801

Thanks for reading!

Best,

Maria.