PM Orders to unban Wikipedia Immediately

Days after it was stopped for failing to delete “sacrilegious information,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to immediately reactivate the online encyclopedia website Wikipedia across Pakistan.

Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb announced that “the Prime Minister also established a Cabinet Committee on topics connected to Wikipedia and other Internet information.” In a notice released by the PM Office, it was stated that a ministerial committee made up of representatives from the law ministry, the ministry of economic affairs, and the ministry of information “was of the considered opinion that Wikipedia was a useful site/portal which supported the dissemination of knowledge and information for the general public, students, and the academia.”

It went on to say that completely blocking the website was not the best way to prevent access to certain of its undesirable elements and sacrilegious material. Therefore, despite the unexpected challenges, this broad restriction has more benefits than disadvantages. The prime minister “is happy to order that Wikipedia may be restored with immediate effect “given the aforementioned recommendation, it stated. A second cabinet committee has been established by the prime minister, according to the statement, to assess whether the PTA’s decision to ban Wikipedia to limit access to some sacrilegious and objectionable content was appropriate.

The committee, which consists of the ministers for information technology and telecommunications, law and justice, information and broadcasting, commerce, and communications, will investigate and recommend alternative technical measures for the removal or blocking of access to objectionable content posted on Wikipedia and other online information sites “given our social, cultural, and religious sensitivities.” For the committee’s secretarial needs, the IT ministry will be there. Within a week, the committee was required to offer its findings and recommendations to the Federal Cabinet for consideration. Millions of people all over the world frequently use Wikipedia as a starting point on the internet for essential information since it is a free, editable encyclopedia that is crowdsourced.

PTA condemned Wikipedia on Wednesday and ordered the “sacrilegious and blasphemous content” to be blocked or removed for 48 hours. However, on Saturday, the website was shut down nationwide by the telecoms authority because it disobeyed its orders.

The Wikimedia Foundation previously issued the following statement: “On February 1, we got notification from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority that ‘the services of Wikipedia have been degraded for 48 hours’ for failure to remove content deemed ‘unlawful’. Our data as of February 3 indicate that this has grown into a full block.

The fifth most populated country in the world would not have access to the “biggest free information library” if the site were blocked in Pakistan, according to the statement. It said that “everyone would lose access to Pakistan’s history and culture” if Wikipedia were blocked. The government hadn’t been blind to offensive material on Wikipedia or other well-known online resources before. Due to “sacrilegious content” being distributed on the networks, the PTA sent notices to Google Inc. and Wikipedia in December 2020.

Between 2012 and 2016, Pakistan blocked YouTube. Additionally, due to its “indecent” and “immoral” material, the nation has recently blacklisted the video-sharing app TikTok many times.

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