PTA chief suggests to block social media in Pakistan over blasphemous content

The chairman from Pakistan Telecommunications Authority Maj. Gen. (Retd) Amir Azeem Bajwa has suggested that the government should block social media websites in the country.

While briefing the Senate Standing Committee, the chairman said that there was blasphemous content on social media websites and several fake accounts spreading this type of content over the platforms. He said that the majority of these websites were being operated from outside of the country.

Amir Bajwa called on the government to formulate a policy and follow the examples of UAE and China to block social media networks. He recommended that like these countries, Pakistan should ban such websites as well. He added that the government had tasked PTA to make social media rules which the authority will present soon.

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Bajwa informed the committee that since 2010 over 39,000 links had been blocked as the percentage of a generation of child pornography in the country is significantly high. He also informed the senate body that 8000 websites related to pornography had been blocked.

The chairman revealed that the authority received around 8000 complaints regarding blasphemous content and PTA had also blocked around 40000 websites containing such hate content.

Previously, in a meeting with Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Amir Bajwa said, “More than 2,384 child pornography sites have been blocked. New pornographic websites keep surfacing, but the trend is on the decline nonetheless. In fact, Google wanted to know how we achieved the declining trend of access to pornographic websites. We responded that the declining trend was the result of aggressive blocking of some 800,000 porn websites to date, and it is an ongoing exercise.”

PTA recently also sent one such message to the public which explains that “sharing of blasphemy, pornography, terrorism and other unlawful content on social media is illegal.” Moreover, the telecommunication authority has also advised users to report such content by following the simple procedure here.