Amnesty International has accused the Somali government of setting up internet monitoring teams to track down journalists and report them to Facebook to suspend their accounts, in order to silence critical media voices.
The Somali Journalists Syndicate said last month that the Western-backed government in Mogadishu arrested 38 journalists last year, setting an annual local record, raising concerns ahead of parliamentary elections later this year.
London-based Amnesty International said in a new report on government media freedom in Somalia on Thursday that the government's monitoring efforts had resulted in the closure of ten Facebook accounts of journalists in a single day in June.
All of them were told by Facebook that their accounts violated community standards without specifying the reasons.
The Somali government rejected the organization's report detailing other violations of press freedom, including the beating and arrest of journalists.
"Somalia ... will continue to apply the rule of law, which includes freedom of the media," the Ministry of Information said in a statement.