Pakistan blocks Twitter, Blackberry after Facebook and YouTube

After blocking Facebook and YouTube, the Pakistani authorities on Friday widened the crackdown on websites with blasphemous content by restricting access to the social networking website Twitter.

They have also blocked Blackberry mobile services, pushing Pakistan back to prehistoric times in terms of communication. No reason was given for banning Blackberry’s service.

Pakistani users were unable to log into Twitter after internet service providers blocked access to the site.

When users tried to log into the site, their browsers displayed the message ‘This site is restricted’.

Over two days, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked websites like Facebook and YouTube, citing “sacrilegious contents” as the reason for the action.

The ban, which includes certain pages on Flickr and Wikipedia, came a day after access to Facebook was suspended on orders from a Pakistani court.

Some Islamic lawyers won that injunction, arguing that a contest, started by users for drawings of the Prophet Mohammed called ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day’, was offensive.

The authorities have blocked over 450 URLs.

The government acted against Facebook and YouTube after it failed to persuade the websites to remove the “derogatory material,” the PTA said.

Meanwhile, thousands of protesters took to the streets across Pakistan and called the contest to draw caricatures of the Prophet open “cyber terrorism”.

In Islamabad, religious leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-ud-Dawa issued a decree calling for the killing of those who were involved in initiating the competition as well as those taking part in it.

In Lahore, workers of the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-ud-Dawa staged protest rallies, burnt US and Swedish flags, and demanded that the youth boycott such sites.

According to Wahaj-us-Siraj, a spokesperson for ISPs in Pakistan, Facebook and YouTube were among the three most viewed websites in the country. “At least 3.5 million use these websites regularly,” he said, adding that the sacrilegious content was also against the policies of the websites, which boast of strict use-and-abuse rules.

“We are bound to check child pornography websites, because it is something wrong and has nothing to do with the freedom of speech. Similarly, these caricatures are another example of absurdity,” he said.

The two websites generate revenues by posting Pakistan-specific advertisements, Siraj said. “However, it is very hard to say how much they actually earn from Pakistan."

Siraj said many telecommunication companies were using these websites. "The hit would be substantial,” he said. “We have already stopped all advertisements for our clients on these websites.”