Internet censorship in Pakistan
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Internet censorship in Pakistan is government control of information sent and received using the Internet in Pakistan. There have been significant instances of website access restriction in Pakistan, most notably when YouTube was banned from 2012 to 2016. Pakistan has asked a number of social media organisations to set up local offices within the country, but this is yet to happen.[1]
In 2019, the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecom was informed by
Overview
In mid-2012 Pakistanis had relatively easy access to a wide range of content, including most sexual, political, social, and religious sites on the Internet. The OpenNet Initiative listed Internet filtering in Pakistan as substantial in the conflict/security area, and as selective in the political, social, and Internet tools areas in August 2012.[3] Additionally, Freedom House rated Pakistan's "Freedom on the Net Status" as "Not Free" in its Freedom on the Net 2022 report.[4] This is still true as of 2022.[5]
Internet filtering in Pakistan is regulated by the
Pakistan has blocked access to websites critical of the government or the military.
Pakistan Internet Exchange
The Pakistan Internet Exchange (PIE), operated by the state-owned
Pakistan Telecommunication Company
In April 2003, the PTCL announced that it would be stepping up monitoring of pornographic websites. "Anti-Islamic" and "blasphemous" sites were also monitored.[10] In early March 2004, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to monitor access to all pornographic content. The ISPs, however, lacked the technical know-how, and felt that the PTCL was in a better position to carry out FIA's order. A Malaysian firm was then hired to provide a filtering system, but failed to deliver a working system.[citation needed]
National URL filtering and blocking system
In March 2012, the Pakistan government took the unusual step of touting for firms that could help build it a nationwide content-filtering service.
Deep packet inspection (DPI)
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) states that the DPI system has been installed to implement the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016, particularly to filter and block blasphemous content and any material that is considered to be against the integrity or security of Pakistan.[12] Canadian firm Sandvine was contracted to provide and set up the equipment in Pakistan.[13]
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons
The
On 1 March 2006 the Supreme Court of Pakistan directed the government to keep tabs on Internet sites displaying the cartoons and called for an explanation from authorities as to why these sites had not been blocked earlier.[17] On 2 March 2006, pursuant to a petition filed under Article 184(3) of the Constitution of Pakistan, the Supreme Court sitting en banc ordered the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) and other government departments to adopt measures for blocking websites showing blasphemous content. The Court also ordered Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan to explore laws which would enable blocking of objectionable websites. In announcing the decision, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, said, "We will not accept any excuse or technical objection on this issue because it relates to the sentiments of the entire Muslim world. All authorities concerned will have to appear in the Court on the next hearing with reports of concrete measures taken to implement our order".
Consequently, the government kept tabs on a number of websites hosting the cartoons deemed to be sacrilegious. This ban included all the
A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Chaudhry, summoned the country's Attorney General as well as senior communication ministry officials to give a report of "concrete measures for implementation of the court's order". At the hearing on 14 March 2006, the PTA informed the Supreme Court that all websites displaying the Muhammad cartoons had been blocked. The bench issued directions to the Attorney General of Pakistan, Makhdoom Ali Khan, to assist the court on how it could exercise jurisdiction to prevent the availability of blasphemous material on websites the world over.[18]
The blanket ban on the blogspot.com blogs was lifted on 2 May 2006.[19] Shortly thereafter the blanket ban was reimposed and extended to Typepad blogs. The blanket ban on the blogspot.com blogs was later lifted again.
Allegations of suppressing vote-rigging videos by the
Social media and platform blocking
On 19 and 20 May 2010, Pakistan's Telecommunication Authority PTA imposed a ban on Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook in response to a competition entitled Everybody Draw Mohammed Day on Facebook, in a bid to contain "blasphemous" material.[27][28][29] The ban imposed on Facebook was the result of a ruling by the Lahore High Court, while the ban on the other websites was imposed arbitrarily by the PTA on the grounds of "objectionable content", a different response from earlier requests, such as pages created to promote peaceful demonstrations in Pakistani cities being removed because they were "inciting violence". The sitewide ban on Facebook was lifted on 27 May 2010, after Facebook filtered content so that users in Pakistan could not access the "blasphemous" content.[29] However, individual videos deemed offensive to Muslims that are posted on YouTube will continue to be blocked.[30][31]
In September 2012, the PTA blocked the video-sharing website YouTube for not removing an anti-Islamic film made in the United States, Innocence of Muslims, which mocks Muhammed. The website would remain suspended, it was stated, until the film was removed.[32][33] In a related move, the PTA announced that it had blocked about 20,000 websites due to "objectionable" content.[34]
On 25 July 2013, the government announced that it is mulling over reopening YouTube during the second week of August. A special 12-member committee was working under the
On 21 April 2014, Pakistan's Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights requested the Federal Government remove the ban on YouTube.[36][37]
On 8 February 2015, the government announced that YouTube will remain blocked 'indefinitely' because no tool or solution had been found which can totally block offensive content.[38] As of June 2015 — 1,000 days on — the ban was still in effect, and YouTube cannot be accessed from either desktop or mobile devices.[37]
The ban was lifted due to technical glitch on 6 December 2015 according to ISPs in Pakistan.[39] As September 2016, the ban has been lifted officially, as YouTube launched a local version for Pakistan.[40]
On 25 November 2017, the
In 2019, The National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecom was informed by the PTA that 900,000 URLs were blocked in Pakistan for "reasons such as carrying blasphemous and pornographic content and/or sentiments against the state, judiciary or the armed forces."
On 9 October 2020, TikTok was banned by the PTA for "immoral content" [45]
On 16 April 2021, various social media applications were banned. The Ministry of Interior ordered the PTA to restrict access of Pakistani users to Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and Telegram.[46] It was issued to block these social media websites from 11:00 AM to 03:00 PM on Friday with an immediate effect. The reason to put a temporary ban on these social media platforms was not mentioned on the official notice. Later on, PTA explained the ban by putting forward the statement, "In order to maintain public order and safety, access to certain social media applications has been restricted temporarily." There was a severe condition in Pakistan due to Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan anti-France protests. The condition became more intense after Pakistan announced to ban Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan under Anti-Terror Law.[47]
On Sunday 5 February 2023, Wikipedia was banned due to not removing purportedly blasphemous materials but it could still be accessed using the app.[citation needed] The ban was lifted on Tuesday 7 February 2023, with the PM Office stating, "Blocking the site in its entirety was not a suitable measure to restrict access to some objectionable contents and sacrilegious matter on it."[48]
In February 2024,
Netsweeper usage
In June 2013, the
According to the report published by the lab, "Netsweeper technology is being implemented in Pakistan for purposes of political and social filtering, including websites of
2020 rules
In October 2020 Government of Pakistan issued new policy rules called Citizens Protection (Against Online Harm) Rules 2020 or the Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards) under 2016 Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA).
The government of Pakistan intends to access internet user data and control and remove objectionable content.[51][52][53] The companies would be required to remove or block any asked content from their websites within 24 hours after being reported by Pakistani authorities, social media companies or internet service providers face may be fined of up to $3.14 million (€2.57 million) for failure to curb the sharing of content deemed to be defamatory of Islam, promoting terrorism, hate speech, pornography or any content viewed as problematic to Pakistan's national security.[51][52][53]
Rights activists complain that new rules are compromising user privacy at mercy of Pakistani establishment sans judicial oversight, likely to erode media freedom and freedom of expression further there by erode political freedoms and result in increased censorship.[51][52][53]
Since then, dating apps like Tinder are banned in Pakistan, video sharing app named TikTok faced a temporary ban til removed content; issued notices to U.S.A. based Ahmadiyya community web portal TrueIslam.com, Google and Wikipedia for returning search results displaying Ahmadiyya community and their leadership, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, 's claims of Muslimness.[54][55][51][52][53]
Blocked by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority
Name | Type of site | Stated reason | Start date | Resolution date | Blocked by |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
YouTube[56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65] | Video hosting service |
Blasphemous material | 25 February 2008 | ||
May 2010 | |||||
Flickr[59][62][63][64][65] | Social networking service | Blasphemous material (partial block) | |||
Omegle | Social networking service | No reason stated | Nov 2021 | Unknown | |
9gag | |||||
Wikipedia[59][62][63][64][65] | Multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia | Blasphemous material (partial block) | May 2010 | ||
Twitter[56][57][58][59][60][61] | Social networking service | Blasphemous material | |||
Rabwah Times[66] | Online newspaper | 29 May 2014 | Current | ||
WordPress[67] | Blog hosting
|
National Security | 22 March 2015 | ||
Quora | Q&A website | No reason stated | 17 September 2019 | 24 September 2019 | |
Reddit (some subreddits only) | Social news
|
Pornography | Unknown | Current | |
Imgur | Image sharing platform | 3 January 2020 | 23 December 2020 | ||
ImgBox | No reason stated | Unknown | Unknown | ||
uTorrent
|
Torrent Client | ||||
TikTok[45] | Social | Immoral content | 9 October 2020 | 20 October 2020 | |
DeviantArt | Image Sharing Platform | Pornography | Unknown (discovered 1 January 2021) | Current | |
Facebook[68][69][70] | Social networking platform | No reason stated | 1100hrs PKT, 16 April 2021. | 1500hrs PKT, 16 April 2021. | |
Twitter[68][69][70] | |||||
YouTube[68][69][70] | Video hosting service
|
||||
WhatsApp[68][69][70] | Messaging service | ||||
Telegram[68][69][70] | |||||
Wikipedia[71][72] | Multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia | Sacrilegious Content | 4 February 2023 | 7 February 2023 | |
Insaf.pk[73] | Political website | 26 January 2024 | Till date | Probably PTA | |
Social networking platform | amid protests over alleged vote rigging | 19 february 2024 | Till date | Probably PTA |
Video games ban
PUBG ban
In July 2020, PTA banned the online game
Pornography ban
Other notable bans
- Internet Movie Database (IMDb)[79]were blocked for brief periods in 2013.
- Xbox Live and GameRanger were blocked accidentally on 7 February 2013 by the Pakistan Telecom Authority.[80]
- Major Torrenting Websites. In July 2013, Pakistani ISPs banned 6 of the top 10Kickass torrents, Torrentz, Bitsnoop, Extra Torrent and Torrent Reactor.[82] They also banned the similar site Mininova.[83] However proxies for these torrent sites are still active and P2P connections are working normally.[84] This move lead to a massive public backlash, especially from the Twitter and Facebook communities of Pakistan. In the aftermath of such critique, the IT Minister of Pakistan, Anusha Rahman, deactivated her Twitter account.[85] Popular BitTorrent client μTorrent is also banned in Pakistan, it gives an "ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR", but with a virtual private network(VPN), the site works, users are facing this issue from few years, still facing in 2022.
- Pouet, a website about demoscenewas banned as of 19 June 2015.
- Imgur, a website about image sharing/hosting was banned in December 2015. Reddit (NSFW content only) was also banned in 2019. No reason have been given for these bans.
- An extreme form of word censorship is effective on all website's
See also
- Censorship in Pakistan
- Censorship in South Asia
- Constitution of Pakistan
- Freedom of speech in Pakistan
- Freedom of the press in Pakistan
- Information technology in Pakistan
- Internet in Pakistan
- Pornography in Pakistan
References
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External links
- "Ban on the web in the national interest" (Urdu), Reba Shahid, BBC Urdu.com, 29 July 2006, (English translation)
- Karachi Union of Journalists, website