Thursday, June 20, 2019

Sudan Internet Blackout

There is no internet in Sudan. Why? You may ask. The short answer is mass censorship. The long answer is that this is a response to accusations of horrifying atrocities and human rights violations by saying, "Pictures or it didn't happen but no internet in case there are pictures" applied with a glaring lack of understanding of how the internet works. 

Why is this a big deal? Why we need the internet is a ridiculous question in 2019 but I still want to make a list, of daily grievances inflicted upon us by a petty and vindictive government. 

  
1. No email. 
We can't send letters. Reports. Information. Requests. Instructions. Work. We can't work. Even if one end has internet, chances are the other end doesn't. 


2. No Google. 
You can't Google an actor while binge watching shows since you're stuck at home - not knowing if the Game of Thrones Dad King is good or evil in this movie. Names. What ARE their names? I've shown remarkable restraint by not popping over to the credits when watching on my laptop but the itch remains. (On the upside, I've developed recognition superpowers. Who among you mere mortals recognized Dr. Kalu from the top of his head in Me Before You?). 
You can't answer your kids' random questions with scientific illustrations, resorting to crude sketches to explain the relationship between daylight and the seasons. Also, there's no physical option where you hand someone a jumble of words to make sense of. That would've been convenient. While writing this, I realized the person my sister and I were talking about was Lenny Kravitz, the actor in that random movie was Channing Tatum and the movie title I was trying to remember that best describes the events of the past few weeks was The Purge. By a stroke of luck we had an offline temperature convertor so we can't blame the burnt food on the oven settings. 


3. No news. 
This, of course, is the whole point of the blackout. You don't get news, you don't send news. Nothing scares an authoritarian (is that even the right word I need? I'll never know) regime more than people armed with knowledge and conviction, spreading it far and wide. Our only recourse is to pick which satellite channel to watch, adjusting their skewed coverage of current events for yourself. 

4. No YouTube. 
I'm low key hurt my late night shows didn't realize their most dedicated fan hasn't viewed their clips since #RamadanMassacre (I'm looking at you, Seth Meyers). Friends sent a lot of excited messages that Hasan Minhaj did a show about Sudan (a little too excited, if you ask me. Y'all know he's married, right?). Thank you, Hasan! No looking up golden oldies, or random recipes. No Minecraft or riddle videos for my boys. 


5. No WhatsApp. 
Sudan is a WhatsApp nation. The social app has long replaced phone calls, for convenience (images & audio) & security (encryption) for housewives and activists alike. We've leveled up and now a large chunk of work is done on WhatsApp. It's an invaluable reporting tool, especially in my field of work, supervising construction projects in remote villages in Darfur. Progress photos are non-negotiable. How are we going to old-school them apples?




6. No daily rewards. 
You may scoff but if you are a Candy Crush aficionado, you know this is huge. No extra moves, no additional lives. Just you and that candy and hours upon hours of mindless swiping. 


7. No apps. 
No online banking. Electricity (pre-paid) and phone credit are hoarded. No Uber. Flyers came up, individuals offering their services. No delivery apps. More and more hotlines are introduced as businesses struggle to stay relevant and communicable. 
No Waze, no Google Earth, no send me your location. We're back at the turn left at the third corner store on your right and we'll send one of the kids out so you know the place. 



8. No sharing. 
The isolation is crippling. All the horror that happened in Sudan was processed individually. 
While the internet was cut off, marauding militias roamed the streets, firing weapons and hankering for a fight. We were cut off from the world online and we were cut off from society on the ground. 
We did not walk in the funeral processions of our martyrs. We did not hold their mothers and weep. We didn't hug our bleeding friends. We didn't see our parents for Eid or visit our sick uncle in hospital or go to our neighbor's wedding. While the de facto curfew was in place, the entire nation suffered from cabin fever, stress and unspeakable grief. Alone. 


9. Rumors. 
Unverified and unverifiable. The absence of information creating an environment that is both toxic and fertile. Horrible stories. Unspeakable stories. Followed by a day or two of deafening silence until the rumor mill starts up again. What did they say? What did they do? What should we do? Obsessively cycling through news channels, then hiding for a day - or three. 


I read somewhere that the internet won't be back for 14 weeks. The telecom companies were instructed to suspend new applications for functioning connections needed for banking and government transactions. These connections obviously being tampered with, theoretically to avoid upload or download of horrific images and videos from the day of the massacre and the atrocities that continue. 


In the meantime, I'm receiving project reports by phone and conducting meetings about communication protocols. A suggestion that frequently comes up is facsimiles (Google it if you're younger than 40 and don’t live in Sudan or China). 


We're in a very strange place right now. Grief. Isolation. Numbness. Technological regression. 

But, wait. 


Our conviction remains unwavering. Our belief that we will be triumphant is unshakeable. Our faith in our country, our people, our youth, is stronger than ever. 

We will not be broken. We will rise. We will overcome. We will get the Sudan we deserve. 


Until then. We cry. We hold our children close. We play. We talk. We listen. We plan. We do. We hope. Repeat. 


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