South Sudan to lift ban on Facebook and TikTok within 72 hours

JUBA – The South Sudanese government said on Thursday it would lift a ban on Facebook and TikTok within 72 hours, following pressure from citizens and rights groups.

The ban, imposed on Wednesday, aimed to prevent access to graphic content related to the killing of South Sudanese civilians in Sudan.

The country’s communication regulator ordered the shutdown of the platforms for 30 days after gruesome videos and images of South Sudanese civilians being killed by the Sudanese Armed Forces in Wad Madani began circulating online.

“And of course this decision measure did not go very well with the members of public and we have taken note of concerns expressed by citizens and by stakeholders including human right groups who also agree with us on the measures to tackle these videos that are circulating,” said Napoleon Adok, the country’s director for communication regulator.

“As a result of these efforts, Meta platforms have been in contact with us and have taken measures to blur out and remove some of those gruesome images that were really concerned about as such, even though we have set date for date for 30 days, it means that with this compliance, there is a possibility that we can lift the ban on two social media within the next 72 hours requires that our intention was not to prevent South Sudanese from accessing information but to create pressure on those profiting from these videos and also to put efforts to cleaning up the social media environment because our are accessing those image and we need to protect their mental health,” Adok said in an audio statement obtained by Sudan Post.

Following the shutdown, rights groups criticized the move, arguing it was an attempt to restrict access to information, which they said violates the constitution.

However, Adok insisted the ban was intended to protect minors from the psychological impact of violent content circulating online.

“Our directives were to suspend Facebook and TikTok features and not the entire social media because social media is much broader term than those two but we only targeted those two because have higher volume of videos sharing in our country in this sensitive period which we going through,” he added.