Pakistan Blocks Internet Social Media Sites
In a move to stop “blasphemous content," Pakistan has blocked access to Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, BlackBerry browsers and 450 other URLs.
Just one-tenth of Pakistan’s 180 million people have Internet access. The crackdown highlighted the tensions between the Net-connected, urban middle class and religious extremists.
On Thursday Pakistan blocked the video-sharing YouTube and other pages it considered “sacrilegious” to the country’s Muslim majority. One day earlier the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) directed Internet service providers to block access to social network site Facebook indefinitely because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Muhammad. Any representation of the Prophet Muhammad is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by Muslims.
PTA spokesman Khurram Ali Mehran said the action to block YouTube was taken after the authority determined that content considered blasphemous by devout Muslims was being posted on the website.
"Before shutting down (YouTube), we did try just to block particular URLs or links, and access to 450 links on the Internet were stopped, but the blasphemous content kept appearing so we ordered a total shut down," he said.
The shutdowns came after a lawyers group petitioned the court for an injunction against Facebook, after a page entitled “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” appeared.
"Such malicious and insulting attacks hurt the sentiments of Muslims around the world and cannot be accepted under the garb of freedom of expression," Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told reporters.
Drawings of the Prophet Muhammad appeared on social media sites across the globe in support of “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” May 20. The initial idea for the Muhammad Day has been traced back to Molly Norris, a Seattle-based cartoonist who has since denounced the entire campaign.
Last month Norris posted a one-off cartoon “specifically about Comedy Central's behaviour (sic) vs. Revolution Muslim's threat leading to a slippery slope of censorship in America…” She put up a poster declaring May 20 to be Draw Muhammad Day, and citing sponsorship by a fake organization called Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor.
The post went viral, the idea taken seriously and now people across the globe are posting drawings of the Prophet on blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. Several organizers of these pages and groups claim their actions are not meant to offend Muslims, but instead are a way of standing up for Freedom of Speech and the First Amendment.
These are not the first drawings to incite outrage. In 2005 cartoons published by a Danish newspaper sparked outrage across the globe, including Pakistan, where five people were killed in Pakistani protests. More recently, the 200th episode of South Park depicted the Prophet in a bear suit. Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker received death threats and death “predictions” from many, most notably the Revolution Muslim Group. And it was Comedy Central’s subsequent response to these negative reactions that prompted Molly Norris to post her faux poster to begin with.
