MANS expressed serious concern about suspension of Internet services that are used for exchange of information, especially Viber and WhatsApp. These are the services that citizens laregely use to safely report corrpution cases and submit evidence on the commission of the criminal offences against electoral rights, many of which have already been forwarded to the Special Prosecutor in the form of criminal complaints.
The unprecedented censorship of Internet services on the election day is justified by unwanted messages sent to users. However, unwanted messages are not sent for the first time to the users in Montenegro anyway, so this cannot certainly rationalize such a censorship of Internet and disabling use of these tools.
We wish to remind that only the most repressive regimes resort to the Internet censorship and that Montenegrin institutions have never limited access to Internet to its citizens so far. We therefore believe that such a decision on the very voting day does not contribute to an increase of citizens’ trust into the election process.
We therefore invite the Agency for Electronic Communications to urgently reverse the decision on the censorship of Viber and WhatsApp services which they made because the public interest to report criminal offences and electoral abuses is greater than any embarassment that can be caused by the messages largely sent to users.
MANS invites citizens to continue to report crimmial offences and electoral irregularities through Facebook Messanger MANS at NVOMANS and IZBORI.SE which cannot be cut back unless the Agency decides to suspend the Internet in the whole country.
MANS
