It's been a year since YouTube was banned in Pakistan last September. But that's not a stray case of online censorship in the strife-torn country.
Activists say that several other websites such as those highlighting human rights violation in Balochistan have also been blocked in Pakistan . "We have what you can best describe as 'covert censorship' . A significant number of websites covering Balochistan human rights violations have been blocked. A website on the genocide of Shias was blocked," says Sana Saleem of activist group, Bolo Bhi.
The YouTube block was prompted by an Islamophobic film, Innocence of Muslims, which had found its way to the videosharing website. Authorities justified the online jamming saying that the film could cause widespread violence. But activists point out that authorities have resorted to online censorship to stop people from watching politically inconvenient videos too.
One of them is a threeyear-old video of former president Asif Ali Zardari pausing mid-speech at a public rally to say "Shut up!" to someone offcamera that prompted a You-Tube block back then.
A 2012 Open Net Initiative report says that website blocking is carried out by a "Inter-Ministerial Committee for the Evaluation of Websites" , though there is no legal framework to order such jamming.
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