Islamabad
Pakistanis protest against Facebook, which encouraged users to post images of Prophet Mohammad, in Islamabad,on Friday
After blocking Facebook and YouTube, the Pakistani authorities on Friday widened the crackdown on websites with blasphemous contents by restricting access to the social networking website Twitter. They have also blocked Blackberry Mobile services, pushing Pakistan back to pre-historic times. No reason was given for banning Blackberry's service.
Pakistani users were unable to log into Twitter after internet service providers blocked access to the site. When users tried to log into the sites, there browsers displayed the message 'This site is restricted'. Over two days, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked websites like Facebook and YouTube, citing "sacrilegious contents" as the reason tor the action.
The ban,which includes certain pages on Flickr and Wikipedia, came a day after access to Facebook was suspended on orders from a Pakistani court. Some Islamic lawyers won that injunction, arguing that a contest, started by users for drawings of the Prophet Mohammad and called 'Everybody Draw Mohammad day', was offensive.
The authorities have blocked over 450 URLs.
The government acted against Facebook and YouTube after it failed to persuade the websites to remove the "derogatory material," the PTA said.
Mean while, thousands of protesters took to the streets across Pakistan and called the contest to draw caricatures of the Prophet open "cyber terrorism".
In Islamabad, religious leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-ul-Dawa issued a decree calling for the killing of those who were involved in initiating the competition as well as those taking part in it.
In Lahore, workers of the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-ul-Dawa staged protest rallies, burnt US and Swedish flags and demanded the youth boycott such sites.
According to Wahaj-us-Siraj, a spokesman for ISPs in Pakistan, Facebook and YouTube were among the three most-viewed websites in the country. "At least 3.5 million use these websites regularly," he said, adding the sacrilegious content was also against the policies of the websites, which boast of strict use-and-abuse rules.
"We are bound to check child pornography websites, because it is something wrong and has nothing to do with the freedom of speech. Similarly, these caricatures are another example of absurdity."
The two websites generate revenues by posting Pakistan-specific advertisements, Siraj said.
"However, it is very hard to say how much they actually earn from Pakistan, but many telecommunication companies were using these websites. The hit would be substantial," he said, adding, "We have already stopped all advertisements for our clients on these websites."
- 170mn population of Pakistan
- 60% people are under the age of 25
- 25mn Number of Internet users in Pakistan
- $1,00,000 Bounty offered by al-Qaeda to the person who kills Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks
Row over Prophet cartoon in S Africa: A South African weekly on Friday published a cartoon of Prophet Mohammad, raising fears of reprisal attacks during the football World Cup in June. The cartoon depicts the Prophet on a psychologist's couch saying that his followers do not have a sense of humour.
'I didn't start the Facebook page': Cartoonist Molly Norris has distanced herself from the row over 'Everybody Draw Mohammad Day!', saying, "I never created a Facebook page for EDMD. A stranger to me did so." She said, "I made a cartoon about the TV show South Park being censored,"
Ban not justified: Pakistani people have the right to know about the world. The extremists want to snatch this tight from the people which will help extremism.
The competition hurt Muslims. But only that link should have been blocked. It's just that one page.
Bans Elsewhere: China routinely controls users' access to many sites, and was locked for months in a battle with Google over censorship controls
In Turkey, authorities had imposed a sweeping ban for months on YouTube because of offensive material to the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Thailand also blocked YouTube in 2007 over content that officials said was disrespectful to the king.
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