The Pakistani government restored access to Twitter on Sunday, just hours after blocking the site over posts related to a competition involving caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), the telecoms authority said.
“Twitter service has been restored,” said Mohammad Younis Khan, spokesman for Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). It had been cut off around 12 hours earlier. The website was blocked earlier on Sunday as it failed to respond and take action against publishing of blasphemous content, according to the Ministry of Information Technology. Interior Minister Rehman Malik tweeted that he had talked to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and informed him about how people were feeling about blockade of Twitter, a social networking website. “PM ordered to reopen the twitter,” he said. “As committed, twitter has been unblocked but I request to stop anti-Islam material on twitter which hurts Muslims. It inflicts feelings,” another tweet by Malik said. Earlier, the IT ministry claimed that calls made to Twitter authorities over the matter remained unanswered. The micro-blogging website is used quite often for the promotion of a blasphemous competition run on Facebook. “The website has been banned by Ministry of Information Technology and the decision was conveyed to us. There was blasphemous material on Twitter,” said Mohammad Younis Khan. In 2010 following a Lahore High Court ruling, Facebook was also blocked in Pakistan for the same reason. Twitter has grown in popularity in the last few years and it is estimated that an approximate six million people use it in Pakistan. PTA Chairman Muhammad Yaseen earlier said Twitter authorities had been promoting a competition to post images of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) on the social networking site, which being a Muslim state, Pakistan could not tolerate. He said Facebook too held a competition of posting images of the Prophet (PBUH) earlier, however, upon Pakistan’s strong protest, the Facebook authorities removed the said images, but twitter authorities refused to remove the blasphemous pictures.
