Pakistan Today has reported that Lahore High Court Justice Sh Azmat Saeed yesterday ordered ministry of information and technology to block Facebook in Pakistan for spreading religious hatred on internet world.
This news is not being covered by any other media outlet so far (which is strange and hence isn’t that convincing) plus we don’t have any official confirmation from ministry of information technology or from PTA as of now.
According to Pakistan Today, during hearing a petition requesting a permanent ban on Facebook for hosting competition featuring blasphemous caricatures, Lahore High Court ordered the government to make sure that Facebook is blocked in Pakistan and to submit a compliance report by October 6, 2011.
The judge, however, made it clear that no search engine including Google would be blocked, reported the paper.
It maybe recalled that Facebook got banned in Pakistan last year for hosting Draw Mohammad Day and for not removing blasphemous pages from it’s server.
This fresh petition in Lahore High Court is filed by Muhammad & Ahmad, a public interest litigation firm, through chairman Muhammad Azhar Siddique advocate praying for a permanent ban on access to Facebook for hosting a fresh blasphemous caricature drawing contest world over under a title “2nd Annual Draw Muhammad Day on May 20, 2011″.
Facebook is a social network and users from around the world are free to post anything, however, it content is moderated based on Facebook terms which state:
You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.
Facebook became controversial and was condemned for not removing Draw Mohammad Day page from it’s server despite it was reported (as abuse) by hundreds of thousands of Muslim users. While on other hands Facebook tends to remove any anti-Jews or Anti-Israel page in only few minutes.
Update:
We just got confirmation from PTA officials that they have not received any such order, at least as of now, for Facebook blockade.
This is a developing story and may get updated when and if we get any further information on this
