E-Paper
Pak bans 17 websites for anti-Islamic content
The Pakistan government, on Saturday, directed authorities to totally block 17 lesser known websites with blasphemous and anti-Islamic content, even as it asked for monitoring seven other major portals, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Youtube for sacrilegious materials.
The Pakistan government, on Saturday, directed authorities to totally block 17 lesser known websites with blasphemous and anti-Islamic content, even as it asked for monitoring seven other major portals, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Youtube for sacrilegious materials.
The instructions were issued to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority after an inter-ministerial committee met to evaluate websites having anti-Islamic content. The committee decided to completely block 17 websites which are lesser known.
It also decided that seven other websites, including Google, MSN, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon and YouTube, would be monitored and links on them with offensive content would be blocked without disturbing the main portals. Acting on the directives of the committee, the Information Technology Ministry directed PTA to act against the websites without any delay, officials said.
The inter-ministerial committee also said that blocking of e-information needed by students and researchers should be avoided. The action taken by the government was a follow-up to an order issued recently by the Bahawalpur bench of the Lahore High Court. Acting on a petition, the court had directed authorities to take action against 24 websites for hosting blasphemous and sacrilegious contents.
