admin 
LAHORE, PAKISTAN, APR 08: Punjab Assembly Opposition Leader, Hamza Shahbaz leaving after court case hearing, at High Court in Lahore on Monday, April 08, 2019. The Lahore High Court (LHC) granted Punjab Assembly Opposition Leader, Hamza Shahbaz pre-arrest bail till April 17 and restrained the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) from arresting him in cases pertaining to ownership of assets beyond means. (Babar Shah/PPI Images).
ISLAMABAD, (MANEND NEWS): The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Saturday blocked Wikipedia services in the country on account of not blocking or removing “sacrilegious content”.
According to a statement from the Wikimedia Foundation, “On 1 February, we received a notification from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority stating ‘the services of Wikipedia have been degraded for 48 hours’ for failure to remove content deemed ‘unlawful’. As of 3 February, our data shows this has extended into a full block”.
It continued that a block of the platform in Pakistan would deny the fifth most populous nation in the world access to the “largest free knowledge repository” and would “deprive everyone access to Pakistan’s history and culture”.
It hoped that the government of Pakistan joined it in a commitment to knowledge as a human right and restore access to Wikipedia promptly “so that the people of Pakistan can continue to receive and share knowledge with the world”.
“We believe that access to knowledge is a human right,” the statement added.
Earlier this week, the PTA degraded Wikipedia for 48 hours with the direction to block/remove the reported content. The authority also warned that non-compliance would lead to the platform being blocked within Pakistan.
“Wikipedia was approached for blocking/removal of the said contents by issuing a notice under applicable law & court order(s). An opportunity of hearing was also provided, however, the platform neither complied by removing the blasphemous content nor appeared before the authority,” the PTA said in its earlier statement.
“The restoration of the services of Wikipedia will be reconsidered subject to blocking/removal of the reported unlawful contents. PTA is committed to ensuring a safe online experience for all Pakistani citizens according to local laws,” it further said.
The site was blocked after it failed to remove the “sacrilegious content”.
This is not the first time the authority has taken notice of objectionable content on Wikipedia. In December 2020, PTA had issued notices to Google and Wikipedia on account of disseminating sacrilegious content through the platforms.
Reactions to the block
Citizens across Pakistan decried the Wikipedia blockage.
Activist Usama Khilji stated that “courts and regulators must realise that Wikipedia is a crowd-sourced platform where anyone with an account can edit articles, which they can also do instead of blocking the entire website”.
Journalist Shiraz Hassan said, “Wikipedia has been completely blocked in Pakistan probably because some babu thought that it’s an excellent idea to deprive Pakistanis from accessing free source of information.”
ESPN editor Danyal Rasool maintained that Pakistan picking a fight with Wikipedia summed up its attitude to the Internet, and to the pursuit of knowledge.
Journalist Khawaja Burhan Uddin questioned if the incumbent government planned on shutting everything down in the country.
“This will not impact Wikipedia, but Pakistan and its people”.
Barrister Taimur Malik stated that the move was “regressive, harmful for Pakistan’s global image” and showed a “lack of understanding how crowdsourced/edited online information platforms work”.
He urged the PTA and government to review the decision immediately.
People emphasised that the ban was a “dangerous trend” and urged others to speak up if they had “ever used Wikipedia or benefited from” before the government came “for other platforms”.
“Pakistan and it’s inability to understand how the online world works is baffling. Why on earth would you ban Wikipedia,” others questioned.
Earlier The Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) had “strongly condemned” the downgrading of access to Wikipedia in Pakistan. DRF founder and activist Nighat Dad highlighted that the downgrading was against human rights.
“Downgrading & threatening to block within Pakistan is a violation of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which grants everyone the right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”, she said.