Herald Magazine's Overview on the Blog Ban issue
salma...@gmail.com
by Salman Siddiqui
(Appeared in Herald magazine April issue)
Here's the unedited version:
"On 27th February, Pakistan's Telecommunication Authority (PTA)
issued instructions to all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the
country to block 12 websites that contained material that was termed
blasphemous. Ten of the sites showed the Danish cartoons of the Prophet
Muhammad (PBUH), while one had lampooned Jesus and the other satirized
both religious figures. However, following this action millions of
websites other than the original 12 were blocked in the process.
This was caused mainly due to the blocking of one particular site
address in the PTA list that was hosted on a popular server owned by
Google called BlogSpot on which millions of people from around the
world including Pakistan maintain weblogs or blogs. Instead of banning
just that one particular address hosted on BlogSpot, Pakistan's
Internet Exchange (PIE), a subsidiary of Pakistan Telecommunications
Limited, which filters 90 percent of the country's Internet traffic,
blocked all sites that ended with 'blogspot.com' in the site
address.
With ISPs not divulging any information to confused bloggers in
the days following the ban, speculations on the timing of this action,
which was taken just a week before President Bush's visit to
Pakistan, was rife especially as many blogs contained anti-Musharraf
views with some covering sensitive issues such as the Balochistan
insurgency. An example of one such site is
http://freeBaloch.blogspot.com, which is openly critical of government
policies.
On March 2, it became clear that the issue behind the ban was the row
over the Danish cartoons. The Supreme Court, in response to two
petitions filed against the accessibility of the blasphemous cartoons
on the Internet by Dr Imran Uppal and seeking registration of cases
under blasphemy law by Maulvi Iqbal Haider, directed the government to
block websites that contained sacrilegious cartoons. The federal
government, Ministry of Telecommunication, PTA, PEMRA, Yahoo Inc. USA,
and the websites themselves were cited as respondents in the petition.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudry is reported to have observed in the
preliminary hearing, "We will not accept any excuse or any technical
objection on this issue as it concerns sentiments of the entire Muslim
Ummah". In the next hearing on 13th March, PTA informed the court
that the list of 12 sites provided by the petitioners had been blocked
throughout Pakistan. On 20th March, Maulvi Haider's counsel also
asked the court to prosecute PTA for criminal negligence since the
websites remained available in Pakistan for seven months and called for
registration of cases under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code
according to which the death sentence can be awarded to those using
derogatory remarks against the holy Prophet (PBUH) by words, writing or
any imputation.
Despite the ban, the 12 websites and any others ending in
blogspot.com can still be viewed in Pakistan even now, since the
technical nature of the Internet is such that one can use a number of
tools such as proxy servers to circumvent the ban. Also, apart from
those 12, there are millions of other websites that contain similar if
not more offensive material that remain openly accessible; this makes
the ban look ironic since sites such as the Church of Satan website
which enlists devil worshippers online continues to be accessible to
Pakistani netizens.
The truth is that one can't ban all such sites because once one
starts doing that, firstly the Internet speed of the entire country
slows down since each website browsed by everyone at any part of the
country at any time would first have to pass through a filtering
process. Secondly one might ban a million website on one given day but
the very next day the same or millions more new websites carrying
similar offensive material might crop up and huge resources, not to
forget huge funds, would have to be allocated to constantly monitor and
update the blocked sites databases. Thirdly, millions of other harmless
sites, such as in the current case of BlogSpot, get unnecessarily
banned as a result in the process.
The fact is that moral policing, at least in the online world,
doesn't work. Ever since the Internet was launched in the country,
the government tried its best to block pornographic material available
online and still maintains a database running into thousands to block
such sites at PIE's end, but even now pictures from Amazing Hotties
Club and the likes remain just a click away for anyone's viewing.
Unfortunately, as absurd as it may sound, the only way to ensure
complete blockage of any such objectionable material online is to ban
the Internet from the country altogether. But is that the right
solution in the interest of the people of Pakistan? The court case
continues and shall rule over that. "
Sabahat Ashraf
Sabahat.
--
[Sabahat Iqbal Ashraf]
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My religion is humanitarianism….. Which is basis [sic]of every religion
in this world.
Abdus Sattar Edhi (Pakistan's humanitarian phenom)
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Dr. Awab Alvi
Hey does anyone have access to the original Supreme Court judgment - if
someone can get a hold of it - it would be nice reading what the fuss is all
about :)
Sabahat.
My religion is humanitarianism... Which is basis [sic]of every religion
