Makuei denies government shut down internet

By Manyuon Mayen Manyuon, Juba 

The South Sudan’s Information minister has denied the allegation that the government shut down the internet due to the alleged protest on August 30, meant to overthrow the government. 

Though heavy military deployments have been across parts of Juba City, Michael Makuei Lueth, Information Minister who also doubles as the government Spokesperson said the internet wasn’t shut down because of anything but due to unforeseen technical issues.

“It is not shut down by the government but it has technical problem that needs to be addressed, if that fall is addressed then it will come back,” he said in an interview with Juba Echo on Monday. 

The information minister didn’t specify the time the internet will come back, but promised “soon”.

Thon Deng, a technological expert termed the shutdown as a “violation” of the citizens rights by the government.  

“It has affected a number of works that are done online. The government was supposed to come directly through Attorney General but instead of shutting it down suddenly,” he said. 

Currently, most of the South Sudanese community online have resorted to using VPN. 

VPN is a Virtual Private Network that is extended to private networks across a public domain.

It enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network