The online encyclopedia Wikipedia was made available again on Tuesday, February 7 in Pakistan, after being blocked for three days in the country for content deemed “blasphemous.”
Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Pakistan, a country with a large Muslim majority. Internet giants Facebook and YouTube have already been temporarily banned there in the past for posting content deemed sacrilegious.
Restoration with immediate effect
On Monday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif decided to lift the blockade of the site that had been imposed on Friday night by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). On Tuesday morning, it was again possible to consult Wikipedia in the country.
The site had been blocked “after failing to respond to our repeated request to remove blasphemous content and failing to meet the deadline” set for this removal, Malahat Obaid, a PTA custodian, told AFP on Saturday, without specifying. However. was the content in question.
“The largest free knowledge repository”
In a press release, the Wikimedia Foundation, which manages Wikipedia, had estimated that this blockade “prevents the fifth most populous nation in the world from accessing the largest repository of free knowledge.” In the past, some pages of the encyclopedia had already been censored in Pakistan.
Free speech advocates have long criticized government-imposed censorship and their control over the internet and the media. Pakistan also blocked Facebook for two weeks in 2010 after posting allegedly blasphemous content.
YouTube remained inaccessible there from 2012 to 2016 due to the broadcast of an Islamophobic amateur film that sparked violent protests in many countries. More recently, the popular video-sharing platform TikTok has been repeatedly blocked in the country for content deemed “indecent” and “immoral.”
Source: BFM TV
