Sudan appears to be following Egypt and Tunisia’s examples in using Facebook to plan an anti-government protest scheduled for tomorrow. That’s when the nation is expected to release preliminary results of a vote for the southern part of the country to secede.
The Sudan Tribune reports that youth emboldened by the events in Tunisia and Egypt are calling for demonstrations through social media, email and text messages. As of this writing, 13,549 people have clicked “I’m attending” on a Facebook event page for protests occurring from 11 am to 2 pm (local time) in Khartoum, Sudan.
My Chrome browser plugin translates the name of the page as “The peace process in the initial all the cities of Khartoum Sudan” — so much for automated translation — and the main organizer’s name as Youth for Change.
Supporting that effort are numerous messages getting reposted on Sudanese status updates and walls. One that went up about an hour ago translates into English as:
PASS IT ON,
every Sudanese send text
messages, e-mails to all Sudanese
they have on their contact list and
ask them to pass it on, on the 30th
……of January, every one out to the
streets, near Lazeez in Amarat,
Shari AL Siteen in Manshya, Shari
AL Gaser in Khartoum, Al Shouhada
in Omdurman, Shaglaban in Al
thourah, Abou Hamah in Gabrah
everyone out on the streets on
Sunday
And YES WE CAN!!!!
JAAATAT ’7LAS!
Unfortunately, if Sudan truly follows the examples of Tunisia and Egypt, the local government may interfere with citizens’ ability to access the social network. Tunisian officials allegedly did this by hacking individual accounts, while the Egyptian government completely blocked first Twitter and Facebook, and then all Internet access.
What do you think will happen in Sudan tomorrow, both offline and with respect to Facebook? And will the site become the standard method for protesting government?
Source: All Facebook
Saturday, January 29, 2011