‘Blatant disregard for rights’: concern grows over Gabon’s social media clampdown

An attendee stands next to a placard during a demonstration by members of the Gabonese diaspora near the Gabonese embassy in Paris in April. Photograph: Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP/Getty Images

“What is being said here and there, in my view and humble opinion, concerns not so much the substance of the debate as its form,” said government spokesperson Charles Edgard Mombo, suggesting that any criticism was merely because the code had gone into force before parliamentary ratification. He cited article 99 of Gabon’s constitution which mandates parliament to ratify ordinances signed by the president during times of urgency.

Former prime minister and opposition leader Alain-Claude Bilie-By-Nze, who filed a suit challenging the restrictions in a Libreville court, was arrested in April for alleged fraud and breach of trust in an old case from 2008. His supporters say the charges are trumped-up.

Ngabima was a Gabonese intelligence operative between 2015 and 2019, whose roles included tapping phones and monitoring messages of politicians and the military until she left the country. Now based in France, she is warning that her experience provided her with an awareness of the regime’s capacity to surveil those considered dissidents.

Gabon, a country with a huge youth population, is an oil-rich nation but a third of the population live in deep poverty, and nepotism and corruption are common. It also has a well-documented history of cracking down on dissent. The penultimate internet shutdown happened in August 2023, just before a disputed election that Ali Bongo won. The internet was restored four days later, after the military removed Bongo and put him under house arrest.

Gabon’s president Brice Oligui Nguema on a visit to Angola on 6 May.
Photograph: Ampe Rogerio/EPA

After seizing power that same month to end 56 years of Bongo family rule, General Brice Oligui Nguema had presented himself as a different kind of leader. The 2025 presidential election, which he won with more than 90% of the vote, was notably more open to media scrutiny than previous elections under the Bongos, with foreign media allowed to film the ballot count.

However, his critics say he has long been part of the inner caucus of power, as a Bongo relative and part of the security architecture, and is now using the same draconian copybook as his predecessors, especially their opaque management of the economy.

“Today Gabonese people still die of hunger, have no jobs and struggle to get medical treatment … all that already existed during Ali Bongo’s time,” said Ngabima. “In reality, strictly speaking, nothing has changed. You cannot remove Mr Ali Bongo because you condemned certain behaviours and then arrive and reproduce the same. That is not possible.”