Newspapers, radio and TV in the Democratic Republic of Congo have shut down to protest at a hike in internet prices.<\/p>\n
The price hike soared by at least 35%, a situation the Press Union referred to as a breach of the people’s right to access information.<\/p>\n
The union had called for a “day of no press” but some broadcasters, including the national broadcaster, are still on air.<\/p>\n
Civil society has expressed concern.<\/p>\n
The call for a news blackout in DR Congo has been largely observed in Goma, the main city in the east, BBC Monitoring reports.<\/p>\n
The National Union of the Congolese Press called for a “Lundi Sans Presse” (Monday Without Press).<\/p>\n
Radio Pole FM and privately-owned Virunga Business Radio are off air, though earlier in the morning the latter was carrying a relay of Radio France Internationale’s news broadcast.<\/p>\n
Tayna Community Radio and Television has only been playing music while the UN-sponsored Radio Okapi did not follow the call.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s Maud Jullien reports that the blackout comes after concerns about restrictions to press freedom ahead of elections in November.<\/p>\n
The telecoms regulator has since called on mobile operators to reduce their prices, saying the move had violated regulations.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Radio Okapi, government spokesman Lambert Mende said mobile service providers had raised the internet charges independently, and were not influenced by the government.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Newspapers, radio and TV in the Democratic Republic of Congo have shut down to protest at a hike in internet prices. The price hike soared by at least 35%, a situation the Press Union referred to as a breach of the people’s right to access information. The union had called for a “day of no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":224099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=224098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/224099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=224098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=224098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=224098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}