Maybe Government of Pakistan (through its teleocm regulator PTA) will not have to convince the people of Pakistan about the massive ban on internet, as 82 percent of voters (of a poll) are already asking for permanent or partial ban on Facebook. Merits mentioning, we have some local voices against the crackdown too.
However, global media is looking into this matter with entirely different perspective. They are taking this ban as censorship and mass scale violation of basic human rights.
This apparently is a clear indication that either government adopted a bad policy or maybe not in the right way.
Prophets’ Drawings [PBUH] were enough to ban Facebook (according to Pakistan’s law) but luckily, Pakistan had a chance to convince the world that this ban was not only due to the drawings, but due to Facebook’s discriminatory behavior and its apparent support for the Drawing content.
We have discussed before on how facebook didn’t listen to over 100,000 complaints while on other hands banned holocaust denial page in 20 minutes.
This point was never preached by the government; resultantly Facebook is enjoying the heights of media hype even after it violated its own Terms of Services.
How funny is it that Facebook wanted Government of Pakistan for contact before banning it in the country, while ignoring the fact that it didn’t bother to hear the pleas of thousands of Muslims.
Why is this so that Pakistani is always brought to knees? But this time – it was lack of knowledge/reasoning instead of a real sin.
Just as an example, watch following video of Dr. Yasin’s interview for “Aaj Karman Khan kay Sath”. Chairman said it was Ministry and ultimately the Court that ordered the ban – he sounded like, PTA had nothing to do with all this. He failed to defend that this ban was productive (if it really was).
Also note how Mr. Kamran Khan was exaggerating things in his traditional manner, without knowing the fact that protests in other Muslim countries was also on the rise.
Declaimer: Writer of this article supports ban on Facebook in Pakistan
