Pakistan has just blocked Twitter because it claimed that users on the microblogging and social networking website have posted material that the government has deemed as “blasphemous”. Mohammed Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), said, “This has been done under the directions of the Ministry of Information Technology. It’s because of blasphemous content. They (the ministry) have been discussing with them (Twitter) for some time now, requesting them to remove some particular content.”
This is not the first time that Pakistan as a country has done something like this, as a couple of years ago, access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and around 1,000 other websites were blocked for nearly a fortnight for a similar reason – the presence of blasphemous content. PTA chairman Yaseen did not step forward to mention just which users or messages were the catalysts for this ban, and reason has been provided by the government. It remains to be seen just when will this ban be lifted, if ever.
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