File photo. Banaras Khan—AFP
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Wednesday said it has degraded Wikipedia services in the country over the platform’s failure to block/remove “sacrilegious” contents.
In a statement, the regulator said it had approached Wikipedia to block/remove the objectionable content through a notice “under applicable law and court order(s).” However, it said, the platform had neither availed an opportunity of hearing, nor had it complied by removing the blasphemous content.
“Given the intentional failure on part of the platform to comply with the directions of PTA, the services of Wikipedia have been degraded for 48 hours with the direction to block/remove the reported contents,” it said, adding that if Wikipedia did not comply within the stipulated time, the platform would be blocked within Pakistan.
“The restoration of the services of Wikipedia will be reconsidered subject to blocking/removal of the reported unlawful contents,” it said.
The PTA has a history of blocking entire platforms if they fail to submit to its demands to block or remove content it deems objectionable for the eyes of Pakistanis. In 2010, the regulator made global headlines for blocking Facebook and other websites over a contest to draw images of Islam’s Prophet. This was followed in 2012 with a ban on YouTube—that lasted four years—and, most recently, it briefly blocked popular platform TikTok in 2021 over “immoral and unlawful” content.
According to a briefing to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecom in 2019, the PTA said it had blocked over 900,000 URLs in the country for a wide range of reasons, including “blasphemous and pornographic content” and commentary against the state, judiciary or the armed forces.