Senegal Cut Access to TikTok, Mobile Internet Services

Senegal’s government has suspended access to TikTok and other mobile Internet services in an attempt to clamp down on protests supporting the release of opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko.

“The TikTok application is the social network of choice for ill-intentioned people to spread hateful and subversive messages threatening the stability of the country,” said Moussa Bocar Thiamm, the Minister of Communications and the Digital Economy, in a statement released to the media on Wednesday, 2 August.

Sonko – who founded the Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity party, which is widely supported by the country’s youth – was arrested on Monday, 31 July, in relation to charges of calling for insurrection, conspiring against the state, threatening national security and more.

Two people were killed in protests in the southern city of Ziguinchor later in the same evening. A further two people were killed when an incendiary device exploded on a bus the next day, but it’s unclear whether or not the incident was connected to the protests.

On the same day as Sonko’s arrest, authorities cut access to mobile data services – an act which Amnesty International denounced. The organisation labelled it as “an attack on freedom of information” in a comment to a news outlet on Wednesday, and demanded that the services be immediately resumed.

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