Suggested Reading: A Compliment in Disguise: Pakistan Government has Banned the Muslim Times
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Source: Guardian
YouTube is banned and tweets are censored, while pornography thrives and foreign Islamist militants have their say
Pakistan already goes further than most in digitally shielding its citizens from the outside world. There are only two countries where Facebook blocks more content at the request of their governments, and a YouTube ban imposed two years ago shows no sign of being lifted.
That is not enough for some. In a country becoming ever more sensitive to perceived insults to Islam it is not just clerics and hard-right religious parties who want more control over the internet, but also a group of tech-savvy activists who have built their own alternative Facebook. “We are the largest Muslim social network in history,” said Omer Zaheer Meer.
The young accountant co-founded Millat Facebook, now known as myMFB, after failing to persuade a court to ban the real thing in 2010 during a controversy about a campaign to encourage people to post pictures of the prophet Muhammad.
Although myMFB looks similar to the original it has extra features, including a live camera feed from the Grand Mosque in Mecca. There is no chance of pornography, blasphemy or any material deemed by its founders to be hurtful to religious sensibilities remaining on the site, which claims to have half a million users worldwide.
“It is not just for Muslims, but for anyone who believes freedom of expression does not mean inciting hatred or provoking people,” said Meer.
Five years after the original controversy, Facebook is still available but Meer said he would not go near the website because of what he regarded as its double standards. “On Facebook they will remove it if is against Jews, but they will not remove it if it is against Muslims,” he claimed.
Internet freedom activists complain Pakistan has more than earned its nickname of “Banistan”, given the government’s penchant for shutting down bits of the web it doesn’t like.
Freedom House, a rights organisation, ranks Pakistan among countries it considers to be “not free” in the online world.
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The biggest casualty of the crackdown is YouTube, which was blocked in 2012 amid anger in the Islamic world over a crude polemic called Innocence of Muslims.
Proxy services that help people get round the block, which are popular in Pakistan, have been targeted by the government.
Even one of the lawyers who worked to get YouTube banned in the first place was spotted in court using a proxy service to access the site. “I know how to use it without seeing blasphemous material,” the lawyer, Azhar Siddique, said. “My concern is that my six-year-old child could go on YouTube and see it unintentionally.”
Categories: Asia, Free speach, Free Speech, Freedom