Pakistan will continue to ban YouTube indefinitely, more than two years after it blocked the video-sharing website for hosting a movie deemed insulting to Islam, an official said on Sunday.
Pakistan Supreme Court ordered the government to block YouTube in September 2012 after the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ was uploaded on it, sparking violent protests across the Islamic world.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has since been trying to block the movie, in a bid to restore access to the website, but a minister on Friday said there had been no headway in these efforts.
“We fear there will be protests if YouTube is unblocked without removing the blasphemous movie,” a telecommunication official said on Sunday.
The ban has drawn criticism from free speech activists and student unions, who called for immediate restoration to help researchers.
Pakistani authorities have in the past tried to block online content and social networking websites due to blasphemy, a crime punishable by death in the Islamic republic.
In November 2011, the telecommunications authority tried to ban nearly 1,700 “obscene” words from text messages.
In 2010, Pakistan shut down Facebook for nearly two weeks over its hosting of allegedly blasphemous pages. It continues to restrict thousands of online links.
A brittle and insecure culture, desperately afraid that dissent will expose its illogic and hypocrisy, and thereby bring it down. Thus it must act to suppress forcibly all dissenting speech; it considers it a matter of self-protection.
SC ki maa ka phuda
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