The US government recently claimed the outlet is a Russian disinformation tool.
Pan-African digital media organization, African Stream, has accused Google of censorship after the American tech giant locked it out of the Gmail workspace.
The US government recently claimed the outlet is a Russian disinformation tool.
The outlet in a statement said the move on Tuesday resulted in the loss of access to two years of emails and files stored in the Google cloud storage facilities.
In the statement shared on X its handle, titled ‘Google Bans African Stream,’ it said that "Google did not provide any credible reason for banning us other than saying we ‘violated Google Workspace policy,’ which includes ‘sending spam or using the account for any kind of fraud.'”
The statement partly reads: "Gmail has become the latest instrument of tech giant Google to censor African Stream. On 1 October, the multinational US corporation locked us out of its Workspace application, causing us to lose access to two years of email messages and files stored in the giant's cloud-based storage facilities.
"Like other technology and social media platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Threads, all of which have given us the boot in the last two weeks, Google did not provide any credible reason for banning us other than saying we 'violated Google Workspace policy,' which includes 'sending spam or using the account for any kind of fraud.' We have never at any point engaged in the activities mentioned above."
African Stream has denied engaging in any of the alleged activities.
"Of course, we did not expect a reasonable explanation because there is simply none; we can only conclude they took us down based on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's unsubstantiated allegation on 13 September that we are 'Kremlin propagandists.'
"Is this the rules-based order the US and other Western states passionately discuss? How can Big Tech bow down after one speech by a US official? How is that democratic?"
During a press briefing last month, Blinken claimed that RT “secretly” operates the outlet, which has its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, across a variety of social media platforms.
He alleged that while the organization’s stated goal is to give a voice to Africans both at home and abroad, “in reality, the only voice it gives is to Kremlin propagandists.”
Washington launched a major crackdown on RT in September, accusing the channel of “functioning as a de facto arm of [Russian] intelligence.”
US State Department official Jamie Rubin blamed RT’s reporting for the fact that much of the world has not sided with Ukraine as Washington expected it to.
Following the allegations, YouTube terminated five right-wing political channels, including Tenet Media, linked to what the US Department of Justice (DOJ) claims is a Russian effort to sow division in America and influence its domestic landscape.
The DOJ had previously charged two Russians, identified as RT employees, with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), money laundering, and illegally funneling millions of dollars to US-based entities to promote a so-called ‘Russian narrative’ on various politically charged issues.
Follow the Sahara Reporters channel on WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaFClvtH5JM6SSsP7M2Y