American porn star takes on Pakistan’s censors

By Rob Crilly

Belle Knox says she is standing up for free expression after her Twitter account is blocked in the "Land of the Pure" for carrying blasphemous or unethical content

Pakistan’s efforts to stem online blasphemy and pornography have run up against a formidable opponent in the form of an American porn star, furious that her Twitter account has been blocked in the country. Miriam Weeks, a student at Duke University, who goes by the name Belle Knox, was among users whose accounts were banned in the country for “blasphemous” or “unethical” content.

The issue has provoked anger among free speech campaigners, who accuse censors of overstepping the law in arbitrarily removing content from the internet. Miss Weeks singled out Abdul Batin, the bureaucrat at the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA), who wrote to Twitter demanding the content be removed.

“I believe Mr Batin has a problem with me because for whatever reason, I am his poster child: a woman with her own agency and free expression, some icon of perceived cultural degeneration that he feels he can censor to feel better about himself,” she wrote in an email to Forbes.com.

“If he thinks I am a soft target, he’s going to be surprised. I stand up for sex workers, and will continue to do so because I feel that often, we’re disregarded as casualties.”

However, Miss Weeks added that her own problems were insignificant in comparison with political groups being silenced. Pakistan is one of a number of countries struggling to come to terms with online freedoms. It has blocked Twitter and Facebook in the past for spreading supposedly blasphemous content, while YouTube has been banned for the past 18 months. The proliferation of pornographic websites has proved a particular headache. At one time authorities were forced to call in a 15-year-old boy for help after he complained that he had been able to access 780,000 adult pages from Pakistan – a country whose name means "the land of the pure".

Now censors are grappling with how to extend the country’s draconian blasphemy laws to websites.

The PTA submitted at least five requests between May 5 and 14 asking Twitter to block specific tweets and accounts for users in Pakistan, according to Chilling Effects, an online watchdog. The material included an annual contest to draw the Prophet Mohammed – an issue which led to complete Twitter and Facebook bans in 2012.

This time Belle Knox and two other porn stars were also included.

Users are met with the message: “This account has been withheld in Pakistan.” Twitter says its “country withheld content” policy is based on transparency. “With hundreds of millions of Tweets posted every day around the world, our goal is to respect our users’ expression, while also taking into consideration applicable local laws,” it says.

However, internet freedom campaigners fear Pakistan can use such tools to stem political freedoms. “A lot of political dissent has been blocked under the garb of blocking antireligious or antinational content, disregarding citizens’ right to information and the need for transparency and accountability,” said Bolo Bhi, which campaigns against online restrictions and has counted more than 15,000 blocked sites.