Sat 04 February 2023:
Pakistan‘s telecommunications regulatory authority has blocked the online international encyclopaedia service for publishing and failing to remove blasphemous content, an official said on Saturday.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked Wikipedia after it failed to meet a 48-hour deadline set on Wednesday to remove the sacrilegious content.
“Yes, we blocked the service because Wikipedia did not block or remove the blasphemous content,” a senior official told Anadolu over the phone.
“The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) approached Wikipedia for the blocking/removal of the said contents by issuing a notice in accordance with applicable law and a court order(s). A hearing was also provided, but the platform did not comply by removing the blasphemous content or appear before the authority,” it said in a statement.
The PTA had earlier warned Wikipedia that if instructions were not followed, its services would be blocked within Pakistan and its restoration would be reconsidered subject to the blocking or removal of the reported sacrilegious contents.
The regulatory authority had degraded Wikipedia services in the country on the same day that it had set a deadline to block or remove sacrilegious content.
The authority said in its earlier statement that “given the platform’s intentional failure to comply with PTA directions, Wikipedia’s services have been degraded for 48 hours with the direction to block/remove the reported contents.”
The Wikimedia Foundation — the non-profit fund managing Wikipedia — said the block “denies the fifth most populous nation in the world access to the largest free knowledge repository”.
“If it continues, it will also deprive everyone access to Pakistan’s knowledge, history, and culture,” a statement said.
Pakistan blocked YouTube from 2012 to 2016 after it carried a film about the Prophet Mohammed that led to violent protests across the Muslim world.
In recent years, the country has also blocked the wildly popular video-sharing app TikTok several times over “indecent” and “immoral” content.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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