The ruling government in Uganda has on Saturday faced IT boomerangs after America’s gallant Facebook pulled its gun triggers on NRM bloggers and sympathizers’ deleting their social media accounts.
A number of NRM Online social media users today woke up to the sad news after finding out that they could not log in their accounts hosted by Facebook.
The affected include Duncan Abigaba, the deputy head of Government Citizen Interaction Centre (GCIC Uganda), bloggers Ashburg Kato, Ismail Olaxes, Full figure, among others.
Also among the affected Giles Muhame, the senior editor of Chimp Reports an online News Publication media house, both Muhame and the Chimp Reports official facebook pages were deleted.
Parrots Ug learned that Facebook is not allowing any of the affected individuals to appeal and restore their deleted accounts.
This comes few weeks after government through Uganda Communication Commission wrote to Facebook and Google directing for the suspension of Facebook accounts| pages and YouTube channel owned by users alleged to be aligning with Kyagulanyi Ssentamu Robert, the NaUP presidential candidate.
The affected platforms were; Ghetto TV, MAP Media, Kakensa Media, Peng Peng, YY media among others. These later rebranded and came back with new pages and are slowly gaining the following they initially had.
After hacking and deleting some of the NRM bloggers and pro NRM social media users Facebook pages, the senior press secretary to the President, Don Wanyama took on twitter where he attacked foreign Powers for being behind the acts warning that they can not do anything to remove President Museveni despite the attempts.
“Shame on the foreign forces that think they can aid and plant a puppet leadership in Uganda by disabling online accounts of @NRMonline supporters. You can take away your platforms. You can’t take away @YoweriKaguta Museveni votes,” Don Wanyama said.
Duncan Abigaba, one of the affected bloggers went further to tweet to Facebook in protest. In his tweet, he wrote,
“Hello @Facebook, you have blocked thousands of pro Government accounts in Uganda. Just to let you know that Uganda will hold a general election on 14th January, 2020. Perhaps these accounts were reported on the basis of political disagreements. Kindly look into this.”
Recently, Facebook has been deleting posts or temporarily suspending accounts which produce contents which violates the platform’s user policies with the most recent being an account belonging to US’ President Donald Trump.
According to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO Facebook, Trump’s account was suspended on grounds of posting contents likely to cause violence in America.
By publication time, no comments had been given by Facebook as to why the accounts of NRM bloggers were deleted.