Pakistan blocks Wikipedia over ‘blasphemous content’

Wikipedia was blocked in Pakistan on Saturday after authorities censored the website for hosting “blasphemous content” in the latest blow to digital rights in the deeply conservative nation.

Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan, and social media giants Facebook and YouTube have previously been banned for publishing content deemed sacrilegious.

The online encyclopaedia had been blocked across the country on Friday “after it failed to respond to our repeated correspondence over removal of the blasphemous content and meet the deadline”, Malahat Obaid, a spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, told AFP on Saturday.

The PTA had earlier in the week given Wikipedia a 48 hour ultimatum to remove material, without publically specifying its exact objections.

“They did remove some of the material but not all,” Obaid said. “It will remain blocked until they remove all the objectionable material.”

An AFP reporter in Pakistan was not able to access the site from a mobile phone on Saturday.

The Wikimedia Foundation -- the non-profit fund managing Wikipedia -- said the block “denies the fifth most populous nation in the world access to the largest free knowledge repository”.

“If it continues, it will also deprive everyone access to Pakistan’s knowledge, history, and culture,” a statement said.

Free speech campaigners have highlighted what they say is a pattern of rising government censorship of Pakistan’s printed and electronic media.

“There’s just been a concerted effort to exert greater control over content on the internet,” said digital rights activist Usama Khilji.

“The main purpose is to silence any dissent,” he told AFP. “A lot of times blasphemy is weaponised for that purpose.”

Pakistan blocked YouTube from 2012 to 2016 after it carried a film about the Prophet Mohammed that led to violent protests across the Muslim world.

In recent years, the country has also blocked the wildly popular video-sharing app TikTok several times over “indecent” and “immoral” content.

Wikimedia Foundation, best known as the hosting platform for ‘Wikipedia’, has urged Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to restore access to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in the country.

The Foundation received a notification from the PTA on 1 February, 2023, stating “the services of Wikipedia have been degraded for 48 hours” for failure to remove content from the site deemed “unlawful” by the government.

The notification further mentioned that a block of Wikipedia could follow, if the Foundation failed to comply with the takedown orders.

The Wikimedia Foundation said that access to knowledge is a human right.

“A block of @Wikipedia in Pakistan denies the 5th most populous nation in the world access to the largest free knowledge repository. If it continues, it will also deprive everyone access to Pakistan’s history and culture,” tweeted The Foundation.

It urged the Pakistan government to “joins us in a commitment to knowledge as a human right and restore access to @Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects promptly so that the people of Pakistan can continue to receive and share knowledge with the world.”

In Pakistan, English Wikipedia receives more than 50 million page views per month, followed by Urdu and Russian Wikipedias. There is also a sizable and engaged community of editors in Pakistan contributing historical and educational content.

Commenting on the development, digital rights activist Usama Khilji criticised the authorities for blocking the information portal, reported Geo News.

“Wikipedia, World’s largest encyclopaedia, appears to be blocked in Pakistan by @PTAofficialpk,” tweeted Khilji.

Khilji, the director of Bolo Bhi, an advocacy forum for digital rights said that the courts and regulator must realise that Wikipedia is a crowd-sourced platform where anyone with an account can edit articles, which they can do instead of blocking the entire website.