August 19, 2018

Freedom of speech is not guaranteed in 'Naya' Pakistan

located:	Pakistan
editor:	Shadi Khan Saif

A loud buzz of ‘Naya [new] Pakistan’ has gripped many in the South Asian country amid the election of a sports-man-turned politician, Imran Khan, as its new prime minister.  

And within the noise around such a turn of events this, the threat by the Pakistani state’s media regulatory authority to ban the online news and Twitter over alleged ‘objectionable’ content, has simply gone unnoticed, sparking a fear of the curtailing of freedom of speech.

According to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), while Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms have ‘complied’ with requests from the government to block objectionable content, Twitter has not. “Out of a hundred requests from Pakistan to block certain offensive material, roughly five percent is entertained. Twitter ignores all the remaining requests,” Director General of PTA’s Internet Policy and Web Analysis, Nisar Ahmed, has been quoted as saying by the local media.

Statistics by Alpha-Pro, a local digital and social media agency, indicate that some 22 percent of the country’s population (44.6 million) have access to the internet and out of which 92 percent use social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

In their remarks about Twitter, have highlighted that the social media giant was not as popular in Pakistan as Facebook, and thus they had little to ‘lose’ if Twitter was blocked. However, there has been absolutely no mention of the subsequent impacts on the status of freedom of speech such a move would cause.

Sadly, the new prime minister, Khan, did not promise the free press and freedom of speech in his initial 100-day plan which is more focused on matters such as strengthening the federation, economic growth, uplifting agriculture, ‘revolutionising’ the social sector and ensuring national security.  

Pakistan has a history of curbs on the mainstream as well as the digital media. Facebook was banned in the country twice in 2008 and then again in 2010 while in September 2012, the PTA blocked access to YouTube across the country for showing what it tagged as blasphemous content, remaining inaccessible for over two years. Let’s hope that aggressive online censorship will no longer be tolerated in the so-called ‘Naya [new] Pakistan’ of Khan.