Pakistan blocks Wikipedia over ‘sacrilegious’ content

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked Wikipedia after slowing entry to the web site for 48 hours over content material it considers “sacrilegious.” A PTA spokesperson advised Bloomberg that the company has blocked the web encyclopedia for failing to take away stated content material throughout the previous couple of days. 

The telecom authority revealed on February 1st that it approached the web site with a courtroom order to take away “blasphemous” materials from its web site. After Wikipedia did not comply or seem earlier than authorities, the PTA degraded entry to the web site for a few days and threatened to dam it totally if it did not adjust to its calls for. The company did not publicly record the Wikipedia entries it does not need folks in Pakistan to see.

As TechCrunch notes, Pakistan has been attempting to exert extra management over content material discovered on numerous digital platforms. In 2020, the PTA briefly banned TikTok as a result of “immoral and indecent” materials earlier than the short-form video app promised to average clips in keeping with Pakistani “societal norms” and legal guidelines. It is price noting that the Muslim-majority nation has stringent blasphemy legal guidelines, and the punishment for breaking them contains life imprisonment and even dying. 

In a weblog put up, the Wikimedia Basis confirmed that Pakistan blocked Wikipedia and different Wikimedia tasks primarily based on its inner visitors stories. “In Pakistan, English Wikipedia receives greater than 50 million pageviews per 30 days, adopted by Urdu and Russian Wikipedias. There may be additionally a large and engaged neighborhood of editors in Pakistan that contribute historic and academic content material. A block of Wikipedia in Pakistan denies the fifth most populous nation on the planet entry to the most important free data repository. If it continues, it would additionally deprive everybody entry to Pakistan’s data, historical past, and tradition,” the Basis wrote. It is now calling on Pakistan’s authorities to revive entry to the Wikipedia web site within the nation. 

PTA’s spokesperson advised Bloomberg that the company continues to be in talks with Wikipedia officers and that the company will contemplate unblocking the web site if it fully removes sacrilegious content material.