PHOTO: AFP
ISLAMABAD: YouTube will remain blocked in Pakistan 'indefinitely', an official said on Saturday, as experts have failed to find a way to filter content deemed offensive and blasphemous.
The video-sharing website has been blocked in Pakistan since September 2012 over its hosting of the "Innocence of Muslims" movie that sparked furious protests around the world.
The Supreme Court ruled at the time that the site should be banned until a way was found to block all so-called blasphemous content.
"(The) matter was reviewed several times but the situation effectively remains the same," the minister for information technology and telecommunication Anusha Rehman told the Senate on Friday.
"The government does not want to take any chance and wants to make sure that after unblocking YouTube, no offensive content remains viewable in Pakistan," a senior government official told AFP.
"So far no tool or solution has been found which can totally block offensive content, that is why YouTube remains blocked and it will remain so indefinitely," the official said.
Free speech campaigners in Pakistan have long complained of creeping censorship in the name of protecting religion or preventing obscenity, and have described the ban on YouTube as a violation of civil rights.
In November 2011 the telecommunications authority tried to ban nearly 1,700 "obscene" words from text messages, which included innocuous terms such as "lotion", "athlete's foot" and "idiot".
In 2010 Pakistan shut down Facebook for nearly two weeks over its hosting of allegedly blasphemous pages. It continues to restrict thousands of online links.
COMMENTS (23)
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Not surprisingly incompetence is prevalent in this family friend led department as well. Three years plus and the so called experts don't even have a clue or a strategy and are awaiting a miracle. In the meantime the nation is enjoying youtube through alternate ways.
@Mumtaz Q... By your logic electricity should be also banned in Pakistan..
If you don't have the guts to take on the religious extremist your never going to climb out of the hole you have put yourself in. You have the physical courage to confront the extremist you apparently lack the moral courage.
I agree with the government. Otherwise the whole nation will watch that blasphemous movie and and deviate from their religion. We have deviated from our religion enough already, this movie tip the balance over.
I'm sure most of the pakistanis are anyway accessing Youtube via VPNs.
Did anyone ever care to check the degrees of the experts?
so we basically like to kill the messenger
We are going no where. So many education opportunities are being missed. Web portals and tutorials. Pakistan sucks.
What rubbish.
Shameful!! Disgusting!! What a retarded thinking and reasoning! The world is going n progressive direction and we are in reverse gear. Laanaat on these incompetent and corrupt people in the govt.
Better to ban all internet access in Pakistan. There is way too much blasphemy on the internet.
" “The government does not want to take any chance and wants to make sure that after unblocking YouTube, no offensive content remains viewable in Pakistan,” a senior government official told AFP. "
Who defines what offensive is? Are they going to block all science vs religion debates where the religious people get their arguments utterly destroyed? If logic and reason are offensive, why not ban the internet altogether? And why stop with the internet, lets ban books and education too.
In Pakistan the situation is simple. If you dont like some book in a library then burn down that whole library. Also why not ban the whole Internet as Blasphemous videos are not only hosted on youtube but on thousands of other websites as well. The best way is to ban the Internet as a whole.