NAIROBI — Amnesty International has accused Somalia's government of creating teams of online monitors who troll journalists and report them to Facebook's standard enforcers in order to disable their accounts and silence critical media voices. The Western-backed government in Mogadishu detained 38 journalists last year, setting a national annual record, the Somali Journalists Syndicate said last month, raising concerns ahead of a parliamentary election later this year. Indeed, the efforts by government censors were paying off, with 10 Facebook accounts belonging to journalists being shut in a single day last June, the London-based watchdog said in a new report on the state of media freedom in Somalia on Thursday. All were told by Facebook that their accounts had violated community standards, without more specific reasons.

Source: International New York Times February 13, 2020 15:00 UTC