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21 May 2012| last updated at 11:01AM

Pakistan restores Twitter after block over Prophet cartoons



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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan restored access to Twitter after briefly blocking the microblog over “blasphemous” posts about a Facebook competition involving caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

 

The website was blocked on Sunday by the telecoms authority on the orders of  the IT ministry amid accusations it refused to remove messages about the  Facebook contest.
   
But the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) restored access to  Twitter in the evening, several hours after it was cut off, said spokesman  Mohammad Younis Khan.
   
The reason for the U-turn was not immediately clear. Khan said it was the  IT ministry’s decision and he did not know why it had been taken, and no one  from the ministry or Twitter was available for comment.
 
Speaking before the ban was lifted on Sunday, Khan said that there was “blasphemous material” on Twitter and that the organisers of the competition  had been “trying to hurt Muslim feelings”. Islam bans images of the Prophet.
   
“Both Facebook and Twitter were involved. We negotiated with both. Facebook  has agreed to remove the stuff but Twitter is not responding to us,” he said.
   
Facebook confirmed that it had blocked content in Pakistan after a request  from the authorities.
 
“Out of respect for local laws, traditions and cultures, we may  occasionally restrict (some content’s) visibility in the countries where it is  illegal, as we have done in this case,” said a spokeswoman.
 
The ban had sparked anger, and many in Pakistan appeared to have found a  way to circumvent the restrictions and post on the microblog regardless    Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director at Human Rights Watch, said the ban was “ill-advised, counter-productive and will ultimately prove to be futile as all  such attempts at censorship have proved to be”.    Philip Crowley, who last year resigned as US State Department spokesman,  wrote on the microblogging site: “Pakistan’s decision to block Twitter is  another sign of the civilian government’s weakness.”    
 
In Pakistan, Twitter is used by prominent public figures such as  celebrities, cricketers, cabinet ministers and members of parliament.
 
Former president Pervez Musharraf, in exile in Britain, regularly tweets,  as does Ali Zafar, the popular actor and musician. Imran Khan, the cricketer  turned politician, is also on Twitter.
 
Pakistan blocked Facebook in May 2010 because of a competition organised by  an anonymous user who called on people to draw the Prophet to promote “freedom  of expression”.    The competition sparked a major backlash in conservative Muslim Pakistan,  where even moderates were deeply offended by the drawings that appeared on the  “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” Facebook page.
   
It saw Facebook blocked for almost two weeks after a petition by a group of  Islamic lawyers. The PTA also banned YouTube for a week and restricted access  to other websites, including Wikipedia, lashing out against “growing  sacrilegious” content.
 
Muslims across the globe staged angry protests over the publication of  satirical cartoons of Mohammed in European newspapers four years ago.
 
A suicide attack outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad that year killed  eight people. Al-Qaeda claimed the attack to avenge the cartoons. -- AFP

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