While Wikipedia challenges the Moscow authorities by accusing them of censoring the encyclopedia with false accusations of disinformation, another country has decided to block access to Wikipedia for its citizens. This time, however, the block depends on the presence of content deemed “sacrilegious” on the online encyclopedia.
Pakistan blocked Wikipediaaccording to reports Bloomberg: The ban for the Wikimedia Foundation website arrived today, after the Government of Islamabad gave the free encyclopedia 48 hours on February 3 to remove all content it deemed inappropriate. After 48 hours, Pakistan’s national telecommunications services have “cut off” access to the website across the country.
At the moment we don’t know yet what were the contents at the center of the request for elimination by the Pakistani authorities, since neither the latter nor the Wikimedia Foundation have released any statements on the matter. Second OpenNethowever, some pages of the encyclopedia would have been accused of “have content that is blasphemous, anti-Islam and dangerous to national security”.
The PTA, or Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, he explained on his profile Twitter That “we have blocked Wikipedia services in Pakistan after the platform has not blocked or removed access to the sacrilegious content. Wikipedia was approached with a request to remove such content in accordance with applicable laws. The opportunity for a meeting was also provided, but the company never appeared before our Authority or acted upon our requests.”.
In recent years, however, the Pakistan has adopted very restrictive policies against international websites present in the country. In the past, for example, YouTube has suffered a ban of three years, while TikTok was blocked in both 2020 and 2021 in the country. In both cases, the convictions came for sharing “immoral or indecent content”.
