Islamabad, Feb 7 (IANS) Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to immediately restore the online encyclopaedia website Wikipedia acrossthe country, days after it was blocked for failing to remove “sacrilegious content.
“The Prime Minister has also constituted a Cabinet Committee on matters related to Wikipedia and other online content,” The Express Tribune quoted Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb as saying.
A notification issued by the Prime Minister’s Office said a ministerial committee consisting of the Ministries of Law, Economic Affairs and Information “was of the considered opinion that the Wikipedia was a useful site/portal which supported dissemination of knowledge and information for the general public, students and the academia”.
Blocking the site in its entirety was not a suitable measure to restrict access to some objectionable contents and sacrilegious matter on it, it added, The Express Tribune reported.
“The unintended consequences of this blanket ban, therefore, outweigh its benefits.”
Based on the above recommendation, the premier “is pleased to direct that the website (Wikipedia) may be restored with immediate effect”, it added.
Moreover, the statement said the prime minister has constituted another cabinet committee to review the suitability of the PTA’s action of blocking of Wikipedia to restrict access to certain sacrilegious and objectionable content, The Express Tribune reported.
The committee which comprises of the ministers for IT and telecommunications, law and justice, information and broadcasting, commerce, and communications, will explore and recommend alternative technical measures for removal or blocking access to objectionable content posted on Wikipedia and other online information sites “in view of our social cultural and religious sensitivities”.
On February 1, PTA degraded Wikipedia for 48 hours with the instructions to block or remove the “sacrilegious and blasphemous content”.
But the telecommunications authority blocked the website across the country on February 4 after it failed to comply with its orders, The Express Tribune reported.
In an earlier statement, the Wikimedia Foundation, said: “On February 1, we received a notification from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority stating ‘the services of Wikipedia have been degraded for 48 hours’ for failure to remove content deemed ‘unlawful’. As of February 3, our data shows this has extended into a full block.”
It said that a block of the platform in Pakistan would deny the fifth most populous nation in the world access to the “largest free knowledge repository”.
It added that the blocking of Wikipedia would “deprive everyone access to Pakistan’s history and culture”.
–IANS
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