At least two Algerian news sites, Twala and Casbah Tribune, announced on Wednesday that they would no longer be accessible in Algeria, denouncing a new censorship by the authorities of the independent media.
“We vigorously denounce this arbitrary censorship (…) of which we ignore the pretext. The newspaper was never informed of it”, reacted Wednesday, in a statement, the team of Twala, newborn of the local media landscape .
“It is an attack on the freedom of the press and the freedom to inform in Algeria,” said the media, whose blocking comes in addition to a long series targeting private media.
Blocked barely a month and a half after its launch, “Twala.info remains accessible thanks to VPN technology” and “despite this censorship, the Twala team will continue its work,” the statement said.
The same measure was taken on Wednesday against the Casbah Tribune site. The latter also announced its blocking on its Facebook page, confirming that it remained accessible to Algerian Internet users only via VPN.
Many other news sites were thus censored by the Algerian authorities during the year 2020, like Radio M, Emergent Maghreb, Interlignes, L’Avant-Garde and TSA (Tout sur l’Algerie) , according to their respective directions.
Maghreb Emergent and Radio M announced on Wednesday that they were again completely inaccessible, after being partially unlocked in early October.
Launched on October 15 by a dozen journalists, Twala is a bilingual media (French and Arabic) offering both a follow-up of national news in brief and long format with reports, surveys, analyzes and podcasts.
Casbah Tribune, also publishing in both languages, is a national news site founded in November 2017 by journalist Khaled Drareni, currently behind bars.
Founder of Casbah Tribune, correspondent in Algeria for the French-speaking channel TV5 Monde and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the 40-year-old journalist was sentenced in mid-September to two years in prison for “inciting unarmed assembly” and ” attack on national unity “.
At the beginning of October, the Algerian government adopted a draft decree intended to better “regulate the activities of online media”. In particular, it is provided that electronic sites are “exclusively” hosted in Algeria.
“All the resources (material, software, human, creation, operation) necessary for hosting a site must also be in Algeria,” according to the official APS agency.
Besides Khaled Drareni, several Algerian journalists and / or bloggers are the subject of legal proceedings or sentences to prison terms.
This Internet twist is part of a context of systematic repression targeting daily human rights activists, political opponents, journalists and bloggers critical of the regime.
Nearly 90 people are currently imprisoned in Algeria for acts related to individual freedoms. Charges based largely on their publications on Facebook, according to the National Committee for the Liberation of Prisoners (CNLD), a solidarity association.
Algeria is in 146th place (out of 180) in the 2020 world press freedom ranking established by RSF, a drop of five places compared to 2019 and 27 places compared to 2015.
