Why is Pakistan banned on Wikipedia?
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) banned Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia website, throughout the country for refusing to remove or block content that the Pakistani state found to be “sacrilegious”. This ban on Wikipedia came into effect yesterday.
“Wikipedia was approached for blocking/removal of the said contents by issuing a notice under applicable law & court order(s). An opportunity of hearing was also provided, however, the platform neither complied by removing the blasphemous content nor appeared before the Authority.”
-Official statement of the PTA regarding the ban
My take on this is that this is the stupidity of the Pakistani state at its finest. Pakistan is suffering from an economic crisis, political instability and extremism. Yet, the state is more focused on now trying to impose its blasphemy laws onto the internet itself. It seems as if the main telecommunication regulation body in Pakistan does not even understand how the internet works. Everytime you think that the Pakistani state cannot do something stupider, it goes out of its way to prove you wrong…
For those are too young to remember, Pakistan already tried this stupidity a few times previously; only to miserably fail every single time. The PTA blocked Youtube and other websites a few years ago for refusing to remove “sacrilegious” content form the website to appease Pakistan’s blasphemy ideals. Did Youtube suffer from this decision? No. Not in the slightest. The ones who suffered were the Pakistani people. Everyone continued to use Youtube via proxy or VPN just as much as before. The only difference thing the PTA accomplished was that it made it more annoying to use Youtube. These bans on extremely popular and useful websites only hurt Pakistan. This too at a time when the IT industry in other developing countries (like India) were taking off. The end result was that it set Pakistan back in terms of its IT development by years. The PTA at the end had to humiliatingly backtrack on its decision to eventually unblock Youtube (and other websites) years later, when they came to the conclusion that Youtube simply did not care for appeasing them.
It is simply impossible for any country to control what information or content exists on the internet. Any attempt of trying to control it is an exercise in futility. This holds especially true for a country like Pakistan, which has very limited influence. We will likely see more of the same this time as well. Wikipedia has already made it clear that it will not change the manner of its workings to appease Pakistan. The decision to ban it will only come back to hurt Pakistan, as it will deprive the public from having easy access to the world’s largest online encyclopedia. A few years from now, the PTA will eventually make another humiliating u-turn to unblock the website; which the PTA has repeatedly shown is the only thing that it excels at.
“We believe that access to knowledge is a human right. A block of Wikipedia in Pakistan 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 history and culture”
-Response of the Wikimedia Foundation to the ban
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