The most popular video sharing website, YouTube, has been blocked in Pakistan in a bid to restrict blasphemous material.
The blockade came after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) directed Internet service providers to stop access to social network Facebook indefinitely on Wednesday because of an online competition related to drawing blasphemous cartoons and sketches of the holy Prophet Mohammad Sallalaho Alaihe Wasallam in gross violation of fundamental human rights pertaining to one’s religion. Representation of any prophet is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous in Islam, whether the caricature or cartoons.
YouTube was also blocked in Tunisia, Muslim country, in 2007 for about a year for what it called un-Islamic videos. It was also blocked by Turkey in the same year.
The action was taken after the authority (PTA) determined that some violating caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were transferred from Facebook to YouTube.
Blocking of these two websites would cut up to 25 percent of total Internet traffic in Pakistan. It’ll have an impact on the overall Internet traffic as they consume up 20 to 25 percent of the country’s total 65 GB traffic.
Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.
Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark’s embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.
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