PHOTO:FACEBOOK PAGE OF TAIMUR RAHMAN
ISLAMABAD:
Popular social networking website Facebook has blocked the page of a Pakistani rock band, Laal, and others that criticise the Taliban, angering activists campaigning against censorship in the country. Laal formed in 2007 and their Facebook page has more than 400,000 likes, with users frequently joining debates on issues ranging from feminism to the role of the country’s army in politics. But it has been inaccessible to users from inside Pakistan since Wednesday.
“Facebook didn’t even inform us, I realised when I noticed no activity on our page,” Taimur Rahman, Laal’s lead guitarist, told AFP.
Facebook confirmed the move to AFP on Friday, saying Laal’s page had been blocked inside Pakistan at Islamabad’s request, under an agreement to limit access to material that violates local laws.
A Facebook spokeswoman said, “While we never remove this type of content from the site entirely, like most Internet services, we may restrict people from accessing it in the countries where it is determined to be illegal. Before we restrict the content, we take significant steps to investigate each unique claim, consult with local counsel and other experts in the country, and will only remove content in the most limited way possible.”
According to a page on Facebook that deals with government requests, 162 pieces of content were restricted for viewership inside Pakistan between July to December 2013.
“We restricted access in Pakistan to a number of pieces of content primarily reported by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and the Ministry of Information Technology under local laws prohibiting blasphemy and criticism of the state,” the page says.
When called for comment on Friday, Khurram Ali Mehran, a spokesman for the regulatory body denied the existence of such an agreement, saying Facebook had acted alone. “We have no agreement with Facebook whatsoever,” he said. “We have not closed the page of Laal, Facebook has its own terms of reference and it closes pages that seem indecent to them,” he added.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 7th, 2014.
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May now they'll realize that they should have built their own sites with their own domain names instead of wasting all that effort on facebook's site.