to power yet from popular singer-turned-
lawmaker Bobi Wine, had been angered by the
social network’s removal before the vote of what
it said were fake accounts linked to his party.
In Belarus, the internet went down for 61 hours
after the Aug. 9 presidential election, marking
Europe’s first internet blackout. Service was
cut after election results handed victory to
authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko
but the vote was widely seen as rigged and
sparked enormous protests. Access remained
unstable for months, particularly around
weekend protests, when mobile internet service
repeatedly went down.
The risk is that regular shutdowns become
normalized, said Toker.
“You get a kind of Pavlovian response where
both the public in the country and the
wider international community will become
desensitized to these shutdowns,” he said, calling
it the “greatest risk to our collective freedom in
the digital age.”
Internet shutdowns are also common in
democratic India, where Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s government has increasingly
used them to target his political opposition.
His Hindu nationalist government has ordered
hundreds of regional shutdowns, according to
a tracking site.
Most have been in disputed Kashmir, which
endured an 18-month blockade of high-
speed mobile service that ended last week.
But they’ve also been deployed elsewhere for
anti-government demonstrations, including
massive farmers’ protests that have rattled
Modi’s administration.