Ethiopia blocks opposition Web sites -watchdog

By Andrew Heavens

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - An Internet watchdog on Tuesday accused Ethiopia of blocking scores of anti-government Web sites and millions of blogs in one of sub-Saharan Africa's biggest cases of cyber-censorship.

Web monitor, the OpenNet Initiative, said the Horn of Africa country was stopping citizens from viewing opposition-linked Web sites, and blogs hosted by Blogger, an online journal community owned by Internet search engine Google Inc.

Ethiopia dismissed the report as "a baseless allegation".

"We may have technical problems from time to time," Information Ministry spokesman Zemedkun Tekle. "But we have not done anything like that and we have no intention of doing anything like that."

The OpenNet Initiative -- a partnership between Harvard Law School, and universities of Toronto and Cambridge and Oxford -- said it had gathered proof of interference.

"We have run diagnostic tests using volunteers in Ethiopia which indicate that they are blocking IP addresses," OpenNet research director Robert Faris said, referring to the unique numeric addresses of Web sites.

"The evidence is overwhelming that that is what they are doing. ... Most of the sites that we found blocked were related to freedom of expression, human rights and political opposition," he said by telephone from the United States.

The allegations could be embarrassing for the Ethiopian government, which is a major ally of the United States in Africa and has been criticized for a post-election crackdown on opposition that killed nearly 200 people in 2005.