Hurrah, Ethiopia Officially Blocked My Blog Today!

One of my follower from Ethiopia expressed his enkuan adresh (congrats message) over the blockage of my blog in Ethiopia. Hmm, I am not shocked but I'm a bit surprised Shimeles Kemal & co tolerated my tiny-mini, shabby, messy "blog" this long; provided many of my visitors have been from Ethiopia. I checked the traffic to my blog a while ago and I found out that my blog is officially blocked today. According recent overview the traffic to my blog, there were over 140 visitors from Ethiopia from May 3th 2012 till May 31st 2012. There were only 14 visitors during the week and today there was only 1 visitor whom I guess was my follower who told me about the blockage and visited my blog via proxy website. This follower got the following "error" message last week while trying to access my blog in Ethiopia. 

The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.facebook.com/l/HAQEBMIL1AQG6vdD5h4p64gDcIwjBBV9OCBMk0sR2__mXww/irefugee.blogspot.com/2012/06/2012.html?spref=tw

The following error was encountered:
We can not connect to the server you have requested.
This means that:
The server might be busy at this time.
The server is not reachable.
Please try later to see if you can go through.
Generated Tue, 05 Jun 2012 06:46:48 GMT


Well, then I have to create blog 2nd, 3rd and nth like Abe Tokichaw ( famous Ethiopian satirist who fled to the U.S.A. recently due to unprecedented pressure from the ruling party and its cadres. I'm really humbled that my former employers recognized my activity as a threat to their broad-light crimes. Some say  “ For instance Abe Tokichaw, exiled Amharic satirist, WAS Forced to open new blogs for more Than 15 times by Changing domain names history of blogs. He looks like playing hide and seek with Ethio-Telecom."

The phenomenon of Ethiopian Internet censorship also covered by international media outlets like The New York Times and Huffington Post. According an Ethiopian opposition party based in America, what's even more disturbing is that now a days China, aka the hub of all internet censorship, is arming its partner in crimes at Menelik Palace financially and logistically to use ordinary cell phones as spy devices by tracking citizens’ movements and listening to people’s private conversations even when the cell phones are turned off. I guess, the regime in Addis is in its highest paranoia and does everything written in the book to save its image which has been destroyed beyond recognition. Thanks China & http://www.insa.gov.et/ :) but remember there are always ingenious people who will manage to pass-by your 'invincible' firewall. You can block and censor as many blogs and new-outlets as possible but the fact of the matter is that you have neither the capacity nor the money to control people's quest to find the truth.