{"id":26816,"date":"2016-07-12T02:21:10","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T02:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/ethiopia-blocks-social-media-sites-over-exam-leak\/"},"modified":"2016-07-12T02:20:58","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T02:20:58","slug":"ethiopia-blocks-social-media-sites-over-exam-leak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/ethiopia-blocks-social-media-sites-over-exam-leak\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia blocks social media sites over exam leak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Government blocks Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Viber after exam papers were leaked online last month.}<\/p>\n<p>Ethiopia has blocked social media sites across the country after questions from end-of-year university exams were posted online last month, sparking a national scandal.<\/p>\n<p>The online leak of national of the exam sheets, which many have called an embarrassment for the government, forced the tests to be postponed.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Viber have been inaccessible in the Horn of Africa&#8217;s most populous country since Saturday morning, and will continue to be so until the national school examinations are concluded on Wednesday, according to government officials. <\/p>\n<p>A government spokesman said the ban was aimed at stopping students taking university entrance exams this week from being &#8220;distracted&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s blocked. It&#8217;s a temporary measure until Wednesday. Social media have proven to be a distraction for students,&#8221; government spokesman Getachew Reda told AFP news agency. <\/p>\n<p>Ethiopia is one of the first African countries to censor the internet, beginning in 2006 with opposition blogs, according to experts. <\/p>\n<p>Prominent blogger Daniel Berhane denounced the move as a &#8220;dangerous precedent&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no transparency on who decides why it&#8217;s necessary or who decides for how long,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This time it&#8217;s for a few days but next time it could be for months&#8230;They&#8217;re flexing their muscles. They got multiple tools and they&#8217;re testing them.&#8221; Berhane said<\/p>\n<p>Last week, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning the blocking of internet as a human rights violation.<\/p>\n<p>Some 254,000 students are expected to sit the national examination, according to the ministry of education.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-13439 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/7542c31c44a14ceaa0193f18061e3d2f_18.jpg\" alt=\"The block on social media sites will remain in place until exams finish on Wednesday, according government officials\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Government blocks Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Viber after exam papers were leaked online last month.} Ethiopia has blocked social media sites across the country after questions from end-of-year university exams were posted online last month, sparking a national scandal. The online leak of national of the exam sheets, which many have called an embarrassment for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-26816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26816"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=26816"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=26816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}