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The committee to protect journalists (CPJ) has joined about 79 rights organisations to urge African Union and United Nations experts to end the year-long block on social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp

The block on social media platform has been imposed by the government of Chad.

The letters, addressed respectively to the African Union Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, emphasised how network disruptions “limit the ability of journalists to report safely and for citizens to access information,” among other consequences.

“We have to circumvent censorship on social networks using virtual private networks (VPNs). Journalists have to wriggle for hours to post articles online,” Moussa Nguedmbaye, editorial coordinator for the privately owned, N'djaména-based news website Tchad Infos, told CPJ in January 2019.

“Social networks are a way to reach the most readers. Before the block on social networks, each article reached four to five thousand readers. With this block we do not even reach two thousand. The blockage really reduced the traffic,” Nguedmbaye added.

The letters to the special rapporteurs can be found in the African Union Special Rapporteur Lawrence Murugu Mute and UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye.

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