*ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has resented government’sapparent inaction to censor content deemed insulting to Islam on Twitter,and threatened to order blockage of the micro-blogging website if noappropriate action was taken against online material.*
In his remarks over non implementation of the court judgment passed onMarch 31, 2017, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the IHC asked whysacrilegious material was still present on Twitter despite orders for itsremoval.
He asked the government to write a letter to Twitter authorities on theissue and submit report in the next hearing. He said the court could orderblocking of social media sites if blasphemous content is not removed.
The judge said he could have ordered blocking Twitter right away but thenthe issue would be raised by the politicians that their election campaignswere being affected.
In March 2017, the IHC had directed the authorities concerned to scrub offall blasphemous content from local social media accounts.
It was also ordered by the court that the names of alleged blasphemers beplaced on the Exit Control List so that those involved in the “stinking andcriminal activities may not escape from lawful proceedings.”
In his response, the chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authorityhad said that eliminating all blasphemous material from roughly 1.4 billionpages on social media and the internet was an extremely difficult task.“Even shutting down social media would not help, he said, as the websitesand pages could still be reached by using proxies.” He added thatobjectionable pages were being removed with the help of Facebook officials.
On Friday, Justice Siddiqui ordered authorities concerned to write toTwitter, warning he would pass orders to block the social networkingwebsite if blasphemous content remained online till the next hearing.
In the past, Pakistan had banned Facebook for not removing blasphemouscontent for two weeks in 2010 while YouTube was also blocked countrywidefrom 2012 to 2016 over blasphemous material.