PTA responds to social media banning claim saying their chairman has been misquoted

Earlier on Friday, we reported that PTA Chairman has proposed during a session with the Senate Standing Committee that social media websites should be blocked throughout the country due to blasphemous content. PTA has now issued a clarification that their chairman has been misquoted, what he actually suggested was that social media websites will be approached to take down the content as soon as possible.

As for the banning, it was only used as an example by PTA Chairman Maj. Gen. (Retd) Amir Azeem Bajwa while referring to the order issued by Supreme Court in 2012 which banned YouTube due to caricatures and other blasphemous videos.

PTA has been working hard to stop child pornography and since 2010, over 39,000 links have been blocked. In regards to blasphemous content, PTA has received around 8000 complaints and 40000 websites have been censored throughout the country. Due to PTA’s aggressive censoring campaign, the pornography trend in the country is on a decline and even Google has inquired regarding PTA’s strategy to achieve this.

The press release with the clarification is given below:

With reference to recent media reports regarding Chairman PTA’s comments on blasphemous content on social media, it is clarified that Chairman PTA’s comments in today’s senate standing committee meeting are being misquoted and taken out of context. Social media websites are being approached to remove blasphemous content. Regarding blocking of social media websites, it was only used as an example to refer to the blocking of YouTube in 2012 which was executed, in light of the honorable Supreme Court of Pakistan’s directions, against blasphemous caricatures on the social media platform. Hence the reports of PTA recommending blocking of social media websites are entirely false. For correct position on the issue, please refer to Senate Secretariat’s press release (dated 26th July 2019).