Sudan Vote Monitor website was blocked for six days · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Election monitoring site, Sudan Vote Monitor, was blocked for six days last week. Reporters Without Border reported about the site being blocked and called for total unblocking.
Sudan Vote Monitor is a platform set up by Sudanese civil society using open source software, Ushahidi, to monitor elections in the country. The site enables citizens to report election irregularities.
You can learn more about the site from Rebekah's interview with Fareed Zein who heads Sudan Vote Monitor Project.
Civil society leaders in Sudan have accused the government of blocking access to the site:
This past week, Sudanese civil society leaders accused the Sudanese government of blocking the independent monitoring site, Sudan Vote Monitor.
Save Darfur reports that You Tube was also blocked in Sudan following the release of a video showing election rigging:
Likewise, it was reported that YouTube was being blocked in Sudan after the posting of a video that allegedly showed vote rigging in Red Sea State.
In August 2009, our author Sudanese Drima reported about the blocking of Youtube in Sudan.
According to The Initiative For an Open Arab Internet, The National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) in Sudan has a special unit to filter information accessed by internet users in Sudan. Blocking of sites in the country started in 2003.
In 2007, 41 websites were blacklisted by the ZANU-PF government in Zimbabwe, which included Global Voices Online. In 2008, Mohammed Keita reported that the website of the Committee to Protect Journalists was blocked in Ethiopia.
OpenNet Initiative reported in September 2009 that Ethiopia implements a filtering regime that blocks access to popular blogs and the Web sites of many news organizations.
For an overview of online censorship efforts related to the social web and major web 2.0 websites, visit Global Voices Advocacy Access Denied Map. Global Voices Advocacy is a project of Global Voices Online, which seeks to build a global anti-censorship network of bloggers and online activists dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online.