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CPJ joins call for Mauritius to reject ICT Act amendments that threaten online speech
By Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ) LISTEN
6 HOURS AGO
A police officer is seen in Flacq district, Mauritius, on March 25, 2020. CPJ recently joined a letter calling for the country to reject amendments to its ICT Act. (AFP/Beekash Roopun/L Express Maurice)
The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined more than 50 organizations and individuals in co-signing a letter calling on the government of Mauritius to retract proposed changes to the country’s Information and Communication Technologies Act, known as the ICT Act.
The letter, addressed to the Information and Communication Technologies Authority, expressed concern that the amendments’ requirement that all social media traffic in the country be decrypted would “unduly interfere with freedom of expression and privacy” and “pose a danger to the confidentiality of journalists’ sources.”
Access Now 12 May 2021 | 1:00 am
Access Now and a coalition of international organizations are calling on authorities in Mauritius to review the proposed amendments in the
“In its current perilous form, the proposed amendments in Mauritius’ Information and Communication Technologies Authority consultation paper would vandalize privacy, and damage freedom of expression for years to come,” said
Bridget Andere, Africa Policy Fellow at Access Now. “Access Now calls on authorities to backflip on the alarming chokehold it is attempting to tighten around the country’s online spaces, and instead ensure human rights are the foundation of all social media use.”
The
proposed amendments are radically disproportionate to their stated aims of countering offensive speech on social media, and would create space for state surveillance of the lawful conduct of private citizens, while undermining digital security through attacking encryption. The new Act also hands over
The Mauritian government is considering plans to monitor and censor social media by intercepting web traffic.
In a consultation document (PDF), the country’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA) calls for “harmful and illegal contents” to be removed.
To achieve this, it says, “It is important to segregate… all incoming and outgoing internet traffic in Mauritius, social media traffic, which will then need to be decrypted, re-encrypted and archived for inspection purposes as and when required.”
While freedom of speech is guaranteed under Mauritius’s constitution, the government has already introduced an amendment to the ICT Act, imposing prison sentences of up to 10 years for online messages that “inconvenience” the reader. In practice, this amendment has been used to file complaints against journalists and media outlets.
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