Inside Pakistan Online: ACCESS DENIED

I’m not in the habit of referencing 1980’s U.S. power ballads in my blogs, but after speaking with friends and colleagues with me in Pakistan, the chorus of Glam metal band Cinderella’s “Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone)” comes to mind after going a few days without Facebook or YouTube.  (I automatically started to link to the YouTube video of the song for those who have never heard it, but Firefox was kind enough to remind me that Oops!… cannot connect.  Ironically though, you can hear the song at the beginning of this episode of “South Park.”)

On May 19th, Pakistan’s Lahore High Court ruled that the country’s Internet service providers needed to block Facebook until the end of the month, following a petition by an Islamic lawyers group in protest of a page encouraging users to draw the Prophet Muhammad.  (Click here for the story.)  From there, I think the progression of the court order’s implementation is interesting.

At 1:49 am on May 20th, I awoke to a SMS from my mobile carrier saying:

Dear Blackberry Customer:  BB Services are being suspended in lieu of LHC order to block Facebook due to blasphemous content to comply with PTA [Pakistan's telecommunication regulator] instructions.

I groggily checked my phone:  No email.  No instant messenging.  No web access.

Later that morning, I heard a PTA official say they had closed more than 450 websites, and I discovered:  No Wikipedia.  No Flickr.  No WordPress access.  And eventually, no YouTube.  (My Twitter account still worked though to my surprise.)

I spoke with Wahaj-us-Siraj, a representative with the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan.  He said they had only received orders to close Facebook and YouTube, and many sites had been closed accidentally.  He said they were working to unblock them after customer complaints.  (Interestingly enough, Siraj acknowledged that sites showing pornography were still accessible in Pakistan mainly because no one was protesting them in the media.)

He said that initially, PTA expanded the ban from Facebook to somewhere between 20 and 30 video links on YouTube because material it considered objectionable had spread there.  However, because PTA discovered that the number of videos was increasing, it ordered a complete shutdown of the popular video-sharing site.  (It is not clear how long the block on YouTube will remain.  PTA says if the site removes the videos in question, it will lift the ban.)

Siraj said up to 3.5 million users regularly use Facebook in Pakistan, and he estimated that the numbers are about the same for YouTube.  He said online traffic to these sites account for about a quarter of Pakistan’s total traffic on the Internet.

He added that while users are for the most part supportive of the ban on Facebook, the reaction to the ban on YouTube is mixed.

At 4:31 pm that day, I received a new SMS from my mobile carrier saying:

Dear Customer:  Blackberry Services have been restored.  Facebook and sites with blasphemous content remain blocked.  We regret the inconvenience caused[.]

Late that evening, I discovered that while Wikipedia was unblocked, its entry for Muhammad was restricted.  (It has since been unblocked.)

The next day on May 21st, local media quoted PTA officials as saying about 1,000 websites were banned.  And while I did not receive confirmation that Twitter was one of those sites blocked, I have had trouble accessing it for the past couple of days.

I find it interesting that the Wikipedia entry on Muhammad had been restricted during this process, while the entry entitled “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” (complete with depictions of the Prophet as various household items) currently is available in Pakistan.  I also am surprised that the entry entitled “Depictions of Muhammad” — which includes the uncensored South Park image of the Prophet as well as a photo from Iranian artist Sooreh Hera showing two Iranian gay men in a sexually provocative position while wearing masks depicting Muhammad and his son-in-law Ali — currently is not blocked.

Pakistani officials have been very vocal, saying they are busy monitoring the Internet for what they call “objectionable” material.  Yet, the ban really only seems to target websites that are popular and frequently controversial in the Muslim World:  Facebook, YouTube and, judging from my sporadic access, Twitter.  As the Wikipedia entries show, there is plenty of “objectionable” material listed under easily searchable names.

Do you think these sites are being unfairly targeted?  (Pakistan has blocked YouTube in the past.)  And if the authorities must block entire websites because users are spreading the material in question too fast, do you think Pakistan could — or even should — block all Internet access?  It may seem like an unlikely scenario, but judging by the PTA’s statements, it appears to be a possible outcome.