The Lahore High Court has summoned a representative of the Ministry of Information Technology for May 24 to respond to a petition questioning why the ministry has not banned access to blasphemous material on social networking website Facebook.
Justice Sheikh Azmat Saeed handed over a copy of the petition to Deputy Attorney General Ziaul Qamar Bhatti and directed him to obtain instructions from the federal government and Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the matter.
Petitioner Advocate Muhammad Azhar Siddique submitted that the website would host the ‘2nd Annual Draw Muhammad Day’ on May 20, which would likely result in blasphemous representations of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) being posted online.
The petitioner said that after Facebook was banned for two weeks in Pakistan last year for holding the first contest, the government had assured the court that there would be no repeat of such an offence and so the website was reopened.
The petitioner asked the court to direct the government to stop the display of blasphemous material on Facebook and all other websites in Pakistan; and to set up a permanent authority to monitor the Internet for blasphemous material against any religions and its holy personalities and ban offending websites.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 20th, 2011.
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