UN HR Council asks Pakistan to remove Internet censorship

As part of a review of Pakistan's human rights standing, the Netherlands has recommended that the country removes restrictions on Internet access. The recommendation is part of a draft report of the UN Human Rights Council working group on the Universal Periodic Review of Pakistan. In the draft report, the working group has listed this demand along with 163 other recommendations on the country's rights record. According to the Express Tribune, video sharing site, YouTube, has also been suspended in Pakistan since September 17, 2012. Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf ordered the ban over a blasphemous movie trailer mocking Prophet Mohammad that incited protests around the world. Pakistan will have to respond to the recommendations by March 2013 at the 22nd session of the Council. "It is a great opportunity as it is now part of UN Human Rights Council's recommendations to the government and we can continue to build pressure on the government to do better on net freedom in the country," Shahzad Ahmad from Bytes for All (B4A), Pakistan, a human rights organisation that focuses on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for social justice and development in the country, said. "This is first time ever that a shadow report on internet rights in Pakistan was submitted and a UN member state picked it up and put it as a recommendation for the government to improve internet rights in the country," he wrote to The Express Tribune in an email from Geneva. According to the report, Netherlands made the recommendation that Pakistan: "(r)emove restrictions on accessing internet in the country, which runs counter to the criteria of the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] and the principle of proportionality."