Don’t Block the Blog

As a long time activists working for a free and open Internet in Pakistan, I would like to join Reporters Sans Frontieres in highlighting the World Day Against Cyber Censorship today 12th March. This event is intended to rally everyone in support of a single Internet that is unrestricted and accessible to all. It is also meant to draw attention to the fact that, by creating new spaces for exchanging ideas and information, the Internet is a force for freedom.

The Internet in Pakistan is controlled by the bureaucracy within the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and the people of Pakistan remain at the behest of their discretion on what is permissible and what is not permissible in Pakistan. PTA is quite definitely influenced by the mighty and powerful rulers of our country and enforce censorship on specific websites that they may deem themselves to be offensive.

Historically internet censorship took a plunge for the worst in 2006 when the Supreme Court in Pakistan decided to block 12 specific websites for carrying the offensive Prohpet Muhammad (PBUH) Cartoons which were published by a danish newspaper. PTA should have blocked the particular website but instead blocked the entire blogspot.com domain which resulted in millions of blogs which were hosted on blogspot.com blocked to internet users in Pakistan. In an uproar the bloggers in Pakistan voiced their anger across the world wide web and it also lead to the formation of Don’t Block the Blog which became the front runner in providing verbal resistance to this blanket censorship. The tussle with PTA last over year, only removed when Google obliged to switch their IP addresses while doing a technical upgrade on their servers, PTA simply did not react and blogspot was yet again open to the general public.

Ever since 2006 we have actively monitored the workings of PTA and it has been seen that it remains at the beck and call of dictators, rulers, the mighty, the powerful, and the rich and famous in Pakistan obliging them with blanket censorship when something irritating or defamatory crops up on the Internet against them. There are effectively no ground rules or principles which are followed by the PTA and it is generally seen that a simple notifications is issued to all ISP’s in Pakistan ordering them to initiate a block on a particular URL, the users are to discover only by accident, if they happen to stumble upon the website.

The hypocrisy of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority is blatantly evident by the fact that in an Islamic state of Pakistan millions of pornographic websites remain fully accessible to the users in Pakistan, yet the PTA chooses to leverage its authority on suppressing freedom of expression against the corrupt rulers, or merely censoring reports of human rights issues, all based on the whim of the rulers of the country.

It is my position that the internet should be free and open to the People of Pakistan allowing the people to harness this boundless platform for creating new spaces for exchanging ideas and information, the Internet should be considered as a force for freedom and looked upon as a tool for progressing the growth of a struggling nation. Join Reporters without Borders in joining hands for the World Day Against Censorship

In an email sent just now by the webmaster of Make Pakistan Better, I was shocked to read that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Director General (Enforcement) Yawer Yasin has instructed all its Zonal Directors on 18th January 2010 to block the website http://makepakistanbetter.com on an IP level.

Since its blocked from Pakistan one can still view the website from Google cache and it shows some interesting anti-government articles which may have been the thorn that lead to the blockage. I believe this is a serious invasion of freedom of speech and sadly the PTA has not defined or responded to the reason why this website has been deemed objectionable for users in Pakistan

Upon contacting the website owner he explained

“This website’s main goal is to bring news to common public which our biased media has deliberately tried to blackout. We have many authors on our website who openly criticize the Pakistan Army, the PPP government & others individuals their write-ups, so I think our site is blocked because of these same hard hitting articles. You simply cannot block a website on the basis of having a strong and opposing opinion, because in a country where anti-Islamic or Anti-Pakistan site’s are not blocked and even in an Islamic state where practically millions of pornographic sites are wide open so the whim of blocking a particular site based upon strong criticism against a certain group of individuals in power should not justifiable or even accepted by society.“

As a civil society activist for unrestricted free speech in Pakistan, I vehemently condemn this incident and immediately urge the government of Pakistan to remove this censorship with immediate effect.

Press Statement issued by Dont Block the Blog can be downloaded here Press Release by DBTB on MakePakistanBetter Censorship

Sunday evening Youtube.com started facing intermittent reports of inaccessibility. It initially started off with a simple white page saying “This Site is Accessible” subsequent reports were submitted on Herdict Web shows the inaccessibility lasted for about an hour but then everything recovered back to normal.

It was then later reported that the crackdown by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority was on one particular video which is of Mr. Asif Ali Zardari saying a very forceful Shut Up to an audience member while he is busy delivering his speech at a rally.

Link to the Blocked Video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzuHD5x1fEU [a few other variants have also been blocked]

Speculations are that as this government will continue to edgy on a number of issues as they get pushed into a corner, instinctively they will react in short similar burst. It is a known fact that the President and his core group of leaders might be feeling the heat from the Supreme Court of Pakistan as the NRO was apparently chucked away into oblivion hence leaving them technically ineligible to occupy these high-level offices.

It seems that a ban has been imposed on the airing of Geo News’ program ‘Meray Mutabiq’ by Dr. Shahid Masood from Dubai. According to Geo.tv sources, high government officials from Pakistan have exerted pressure on the Dubai government to block the show from being telecast from Dubai

This show along with Geo.tv has previously suffered the same fate of outright censorship in Pakistan during the 2007 martial law by Pervaiz Musharraf it was then that Pervaiz Musharraf actually approached the Dubai government too and had the entire channel taken off-air for a period of over 77 days. In those days strict local government restrictions prevented broadcast signal from Pakistan and all TV channels resorted to rebroadcasting to the satellite feed from Dubai, since the 2007 tussle with Geo and its subsequent negotiations with electronic media outlets, Geo then moved most of its operations back into Pakistan leaving aside two show Meray Mutabiq and Nadia Khan show still to be aired from Dubai alone.

It seems the President of Pakistan now in the form of Mr Asif Ali Zardari has yet again successfully requested the Dubai government to force this current affairs program off-air. There can be little doubt as to the reason why Dr. Shahid Masood may have suffered this fate this time around, as I’m sure he may have been touching on some sensitive topics which more-or-less will most likely have to do with the NRO and Mr. Asif Ali Zardari being the top celebrity featured on that dis-honest list.

PkPolitics has recorded and has published the LAST EPISODE of Shahid Masood’s MERAY MUTABIQ – in this last episode he shares threats to his life with the possible reasons for having him blocked on Geo, he also sheds light on the level of corruption by the NRO – SHOCKING its a definite must watch

Many a times I have criticized many of our current affairs news casters of sensationalization but regardless of which line they may actually support, I think this censorship is yet again a definite target on freedom of expression and I vehemently oppose it

For the past few days a specific gut wrenching video has been making its way around the Pakistani web-sphere which shows a Pakistani Army Major conducting an interrogation of two people suspected of harboring Talibans. During the Question and Answer session the Major steps back and orders his crew to ruthlessly beat the person punching, kicking and whipping the suspects, who scream in pain and writhe on the ground. The 10-minute video is at best deliberately being shot (but is seemingly concealed away from the spectators) to record the entire interrogation, that goes to suggest that such treatment is a norm within the Army and should not be treated as a one off random affair. [BBC Link]

Sadly this inhumane treatment dealt out by this officer of the Pakistan Army makes me also want to fight back against these ruthless uniformed personnel. Such actions I consider as blatant human rights violation and the Army must be held accountable for such treatment, and not treat this as a one-off incident

Dawn.com reports that the Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said ‘the army was investigating the alleged abuse’, but declined further comment Friday. Pakistan’s poorly trained and underfunded security forces have long been accused of human rights abuses.

Click through this link to verify if the Pkpolitics.com URL is blocked from Pakistan, if it is please submit a report on Herdictweb which helps aggregate information on why such website

The video follows after the jump
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Late Friday night I received a couple of SMS’s alerting me that PEMRA had suddenly pulled and banned a much popular military show called ‘We Are Soldiers’ off-air. This news came a day before the episode on Special Services Group and Marines was to be aired on Saturday at 7:05 pm, but according to a PEMRA [Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority] this show was unacceptable for public consumption and hence needed to be taken off-air

A flurry of twitter and SMS messages followed but late Friday night no further development was reported apart from the initial set of messages which mostly read – “WE ARE SOLDIERS” the first documentary on the PAK ARMY on @DAWNNEWS TV has been banned by PEMRA – The following day [Saturday] discussions across the board revealed that the show was initially designed to cover the Marines which is an organization under the jurisdiction of the Pakistan Navy. The episode as customary was sent to the Army headquarters, despite the fact that it is shot under careful supervision of the ISPR to ensure that Wajahat and his news team does not go over board. The DVD reportedly was also forwarded to the Naval Chief who incidentally blew a gasket, accusing Dawn for not coming for approval well before the airing date but instead the Naval team called up PEMRA and had them issue orders to block the entire Dawn News show “We are Soldiers”
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The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the internet monitoring body in Pakistan has issued directives to all its ISP providers to block a list of six webpages on the grounds that they were “harmful for the integrity of the country.”

The URL Level block directive by the PTA was in response to the decision taken by the Inter-Ministerial Committee whose charter is to monitor and block anti-Pakistan, blasphemous, and pornographic web sites. The specfic URL’s under question carry a bunch of pictures of Mr. Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab. These pictures had been making rounds on various email lists across Pakistan some months back ridiculing the lavish parties thrown by the Governor Taseer at the Governor House while his people have been starving on the streets.

It has been suspected that these pictures may have apparently been copied from a facebook picture album of one of the Taseer family and could arguably be deemed private in nature, but one does have to wonder how the Inter-Ministerial Committee chose to classify them as being ‘harmful for the integrity of the country’

Urooj Zia from The News writes

Three of the six webpages on the list issued by the PTA, however, are from dictatorshipwatch.com, a website set up after November 3, 2007, when then-President Gen (Retd) Pervez Musharraf implemented a state of emergency in the country. One webpage is from makepakistanbetter.com, a social and political discussion forum. The fifth page is from friendskorner.com, a general discussion forum, while the sixth webpage is a node from buzzvines.com. Most of the blocked webpages contained articles which claimed to provide information about Punjab Governor Salman Taseer’s “history”; others had pictures of members of Taseer’s family at lavish parties thrown recently at the Punjab Governor House.

None had blasphemous material, or anything which could even remotely be construed as “anti-Pakistan,” unless criticism of one person is considered an act of treason

Teeth Maestro on his blog writes

Though I still choose not to share those pictures myself but some common sense needs to be knocked into PTA and our Governor that its nearly impossible to totally block / censor content on the Internet as even now a simple Google search will list a dozen more websites which are also sharing the same images

The following are the six (6) URL’s that are supposed to be blocked from Pakistan

1. http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2008/11/08/governer-punjab-salman-taseer-%E2%80%93%-history.html
2. http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/2008/11/06/leaders-of-a-nation-half-of-which-sleep-hungry.html
3. http://www. dictatorshipwatch.com/taseer/taseer.swf
4. http://www.makepakistanbetter.com/why_how_what_forum.asp?GroupID=5&Group_title=Pakistan%ArticalID=4297
5. http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f137/governer-punjab-salman-taseer-his-family-77872/
6. http://www.buzzvines.com/node/3347

It is just being reported on on Erraji’s facebook group that the court of appeals in Agadir has overturned the decision by the court of first instance and has decided to abandon all charges against blogger Mohamed Erraji, and he is a free man. More updates to follow on this post as the story develops

Moroccan blogger Mohammed Erraji was arrested last Friday, September 5th following the publication on the online news site Hespress.com of an article entitled “The King Encourages His Subject’s Dependency” (English translation) He was sentenced 72 hours later, in an expedited trial without assistance from a lawyer, to two years in jail and a fine of 5000MAD for “failure to uphold the respect due to the king”

Morocco’s often-criticized press law prohibits criticizing of the monarchy; In Raji’s article, which has been translated here by Amira al Hussaini, he claims that the King’s charity toward his people encourages them to remain helpless rather than work hard. His concluding paragraph reads

When the young Crown Prince, who will become the Ruler one day, witnesses how his father distributes honours, gratuities and gifts to people upon hearing compliments and praise, there is no doubt that he will act based on the same logic, when he rules. This is why we should delay our dreams of a Morocco of equality and equal opportunities until the reign of Mohammad the Seventh, which will follow after Hassan the Third, who is the Crown Prince at present.

Hespress has reported that Raji has already been given an expedited hearing and judgement and was sentenced to 2 years in jail as well as fined MAD 5,000 (USD $625)

ACTION ALERT

1. Express Support by Sending Photo Messages
   You can display your solidarity by taking a picture of yourself with a message to Free Mohammed Erraji. Please also write where you are from in the message then send the photo to PhotoErraji@gmail.com, everyone who has a camera should participate!
2. Join the Facebook Group:
   Express your support by joining the “Free Moroccan Blogger Mohammed Erraji” group and help amplify the message by changing your profile picture to the following. Don’t forget to also invite your friends!
3. Sign the Petition:
   A petition calling for the immediate acquittal of Mohammed Erraji and the suspension of his sentence is available at www.helperraji.com
4. Participate in the Blogoma (Moroccan Blogsphere) Blog Strike :
   Monday September 15th, on the eve of the appeal trial, several Moroccan bloggers and others around the world will start a blog strike that will last 24 hours. Those who wish to join to this movement will announce that their blog is on strike, indicate the reason they chose to participate in the strike, mention the details of the case and link back to the site put up in support for Mohammad Erraji. To introduce others to the strike several bloggers are ciculating a short descriptive text, and the english translation has been made available by blogger Jillian York.

Courtesy Global Voice Advox Blog & DigiActiv

A directive has been issued from the PTA [confirmed through source within the PTA] that a URL of a certain online video which was made by Dawn News about the misuse of power by the Naval Chief Admiral Afzal Tahir has been blocked

I personally cannot confirm exactly which URL’s were listed in the directive but did stumble across the Metacafe video which was definitely blocked from my ISP [MaxCom] showing ‘Access Denied’ while the video hosted on Youtube at least one URL that I used was accessible from my ISP.

PAKISTAN NAVAL CHIEF, ADMIRAL AFZAL TAHIR MISUSE OF POWER – Click here for more free videos

More updates to follow as more reports emerge