Juvenile buffoonery or actual mastermind?
Earlier this week we heard about the almighty PTA taking a swing at those pesky progressive voices on Facebook. Pages like Taliban Are Zaliman, Laal, Roshni and Saeen lost their space in the Pakistan virtual world. PTA has long since maintained that it would rather prefer if we all hear no minorities, see no minorities, and speak nothing about minorities. As is obvious all of these rules were broken by people on the internet resulting in the moral police having to wake up from its slumber and coming into action.
While we were all starting to wonder if the PTA would ever notice child pornography and whether they ever actually considered blocking the real kind of harmful content. Now, the diligent organisation has been active and doing great work when it comes to silencing the liberal voice online. Not once has it felt the need to come out and actually defend what it did, or didn’t, do. But this time around it seems like the good folk over at Pakistan’s favourite unofficial censor board had a few things to tell us, number one being that they didn’t block the pages we think they blocked.
They absolutely and completely denied having anything to do with blocking just ONE of the many pages that were blocked i.e., Laal. Laal the band was amusingly dubbed Laal the banned as soon as the page owner realised that the page would no longer work in Pakistan. Taliban Are Zaliman got extremely popular for their forward thinking antics. And we all know what Roshni and Saeen are all about (this isn’t the first time they’ve disappeared from Facebook, and it probably won’t be the last). But the real jewel in the forbidden crown is Laal.
Laal the band was amusingly dubbed Laal the banned as soon as the page owner realised that the page would no longer work in Pakistan. Taliban Are Zaliman got extremely popular for their forward thinking antics. And we all know what Roshni and Saeen are all about (this isn’t the first time they’ve disappeared from Facebook, and it probably won’t be the last). But the real jewel in the forbidden crown is Laal.
With over 400,000 likes this is the page that was causing real havoc. Why were all sorts of people beginning to not hate Shias and Ahmedis and really root for a more secular and peaceful country? We can’t have that at all. Laal’s music may well be the stuff of history but their progressive views kept everyone talking about them. It wouldn’t be a surprise if it turned out that Michael Jackson had something to do with the page removal so that our beloved band wouldn’t get any more popular than it already was.
Of all the pages that have vanished Laal’s is the only one that the PTA has come out to give a statement on as well. Now if on the off chance that we’re wrong about Michael Jackson being behind this (and this is a very very VERY small probability) and the PTA really did take Laal down then there has to be another explanation. Our guess is that someone is an absolute diehard fan of the big bad wolf-like band and couldn’t stand it when people connected the dots between the missing page and the missing reason that was cooked up at the PTA (we’re looking at you Anusha Rehman).
“Tu hoga ullo”
“Tu khud hoga ullo”
It is a fun game and we’ve all played it. It seems like it is this organisation’s favourite. Currently PTA is playing it with Facebook. First Facebook says, “Well, the government told us to shut pages down in Pakistan,” then PTA says, “Nuh uh, yellow yellow, dirty fellow, liar liar, pants on fire.”
So far only 162 pages have been restricted in Pakistan, we’ve been yelled at or thrown a shoe at more times than that by our own flesh and blood. Supporting human rights has no place in Pakistan, what else were we expecting would come out of this madness?
Facebook, which is often called a Yahoodi Sazish by Pakistanis for all its western content (surprising since it is a website created by someone in the west), is now being accused of getting rid of pages that it finds indecent. Which is funny because these pages continue to work all over the world… just not in Pakistan.
When people reminded the PTA that their under the table deal with Facebook to help censor online content had been highlighted before, a representative responded with “jo kehta hai wohi hota hai” and as an afterthought added “ullo bana diya, ullo bana diya”.
A lot of people are having a hard time digesting PTA’s bold and beautiful move to shut down open-minded content in Pakistan once again. Some people are calling this the murder of free speech, but that is little too extreme a reaction. Don’t we all remember when we were children our mothers would tell us to shut up all the time when we misbehaved. So far only 162 pages have been restricted in Pakistan, we’ve been yelled at or thrown a shoe at more times than that by our own flesh and blood. Supporting human rights has no place in Pakistan, what else were we expecting would come out of this madness?
