On Russian Wikinews:

Устроившая переворот в Мьянме хунта заблокировала Википедию
https://ru.wikinews.org/?curid=8842919

We also await official comment from the Wikimedia Foundation.

sasha.

On Fri, Feb 19, 2021 at 11:09 PM 《求闻》编译组／Qiuwen WMCug
<qiuwen@wmcug.org.cn> wrote:
>
> BEIJING, Feb. 20 (Qiuwen) - NetBlocks, the internet freedom advocacy group,
> says Wikipedia was blocked in Myanmar by the authorities.
>
> NetBlocks confirms "all language editions of Wikipedia" were down in Myanmar
> starting Thursday morning local time. In a tweet [1], Netblocks said, this is
> "part of a widening post-coup internet censorship regime imposed by the
> military junta."
>
> Netblocks provided additional information in a picture attached to the tweet,
> suggests that they have tested the connectivity of Wikipedia in English and
> French, Wikidata, and wikimedia.org, with none of them accessible. This may
> intimate that it is highly that the Burmese authorities not only blocked "all
> language editions of Wikipedia," but all Wikimedia projects, as a whole. The
> picture also suggests that Wikipedia remains inaccessible across four different
> internet service providers in Myanmar.
>
> It is likely that the Burmese authorities are blocking Wikimedia projects
> using the same tactic seen in China and some other countries, which is by
> blocking the main IP address Wikipedia and its sister projects uses. All
> Wikimedia projects share the same IP address, which makes it an easy target by
> censors to implement a block.
>
> Qiuwen noticed that starting from February 19th, there was a noticeable
> increase of edits made from IP addresses that were likely to be used for VPNs
> on Burmese Wikipedia, signaling locals may have to use VPNs to get onto
> Wikipedia already. On Friday evening local time, an administrator posted a
> message on the Village Pump of Burmese Wikipedia, explaining the use of "IP
> block exemption," a special MediaWiki flag, similar to rollback and patrol,
> allowing users with the flag to edit from VPNs. A similar banner was also set
> up, visible on every page of Burmese Wikipedia. The "IP block exemption" flag
> is widely issued to users of Chinese Wikipedia, and previously, users of
> Turkish Wikipedia, who needed VPNs to access.
>
> Internet blackouts are increasingly common in Myanmar and across the world.
> The military shut down the internet before they attempted the coup on February
> \1st, and the military authority has blocked or temporarily blocked Facebook
> and other social media platforms starting February 3rd. Usages of VPNs
> reportedly skyrocketed for locals eager to access blocked websites. NetBlocks
> says the authorities have been implementing an "internet curfew," as the
> internet shut down during the nights.
>
> This also means Myanmar has joined an increasingly bigger club of countries
> that had blocked Wikipedia. Its recent members include Iran, which blocked
> Wikipedia for around 24 hours in March 2020, and Venezuela in January 2019.
> In countries such as Iran, Internet blackouts also interfered with the
> Wikimedia movement, such as Iran's week-long blackout in November 2019 had
> delayed the Wikipedia Asian Month edit-a-thon. China, the "permanent member"
> of the club, blocked Wikipedia since 2015. It is not clear whether or not the
> block on Wikimedia projects will be lifted in the future, similar to what the
> Iranian and Turkish authorities had done.
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation has yet to comment on the block. Myanmar Wikimedia
> Community User Group, the Wikimedia user group representing Myanmar, has also
> yet to comment. Their Facebook page was last updated on January 16th, two
> weeks before the military coup.
>
> ----
> Qiuwen is a news service operated by the Wikimedians of Mainland China user group[2].
> Follow us for the latest Wikimedia news in greater China.
> CC BY-SA 4.0
>
> Follow us on Telegram: https://t.me/Qiuwen
>
> [1]: https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1362814793502097409
> [2]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Mainland_China
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