By Tristin Hopper | From National Post

As Uganda’s ruling party arrested opposition leaders and shut down social media in the midst of a disputed presidential election, a Toronto scholar is among those the charge to circumvent media controls using the same technology that Canadians use to watch American Netflix.

“We are like ninjas,” Gerald Bareebe told the National Post in a Twitter direct message from Uganda.

“There is a feeling you get that I cannot even describe. You feel more powerful than the mighty state. You feel like you have broken the chains that have been holding you captive,” Bareebe added by email.

On Thursday, Ugandans went to the polls in a presidential election that will decide the future of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who first took power in a 1986 coup.

But as voting began Thursday morning, Museveni’s government cut off access to social media platforms including Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter.

The president explained that the shutdown was ordered as a “security measure to avert lies … intended to incite violence and illegal declaration of election results.”

Ugandan police were showing a similar suspicion of free media in the lead up to the vote. “I fear the camera more than the bullet … because it distorts the truth,” Kale Kayihura, head of the Uganda Police Force, told domestic media earlier this week.

However, the blockage can be circumvented via the use of a “virtual private network,” a method that can be used to hide a user’s identity and location. Commonly used by Canadians to view international versions of Netflix or Hulu, VPN services are also popular in China to access websites blocked by government firewalls.

Read more at National Post