ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani court has ordered the government to open an investigation into online “blasphemy,” threatening to ban social media networks if they failed to censor content deemed insulting to Islam, lawyers said Thursday.
The issue came to the fore in January when five secular activists known for their outspoken views against religious extremism and the powerful military were disappeared, presumed abducted by state agencies according to opposition parties and international rights groups.
Four of them were later returned to their families weeks later, but not before they were tarnished by a virulent campaign to paint them enemies of Islam deserving execution.
Judge Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court asked the government to form an investigative committee to report back next Monday over the issue, saying he could order social media sites to be blocked if offending content remained online.
“The judge ordered the government to make a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) with Muslim officials only to look into the blasphemy issue,” said advocate Tariq Asad, who represents the hard-line Red Mosque which brought the case to court.
Rights groups say the label of blasphemer is liberally applied by religious conservatives in order to silence criticism of extremism.
Even unproven allegations can be fatal. At least 65 people including lawyers, judges and activists have been murdered by vigilantes over blasphemy allegations since 1990, according to recent think tank report.
Pakistan previously banned Facebook for hosting allegedly blasphemous content for two weeks in 2010 while YouTube was unavailable from 2012 to 2016 over an amateur film about the Prophet Muhammad that led to global riots.
But Islamabad later came to agreements with major Internet firms to block within Pakistan material that violated its laws, generally once the companies had performed their own cross-checks.
Yasser Latif Hamdani, a lawyer who worked to get YouTube unblocked, said previous web censorship had also originated with court orders and the judge could succeed in implementing a fresh set of bans.
“In this case you would have to apply to the Supreme Court to overrule it. Would they? He’s going to couch it in religious language...It could create a lot of problems if he does that,” he said.
Pakistan threatens to block social media over ‘blasphemy’
Pakistan threatens to block social media over ‘blasphemy’
Over 10,000 people displaced in 3 days in Sudan: UN agency
- The conflict has created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises
PORT SUDAN: Violence in western and southern Sudan displaced more than 10,000 people within three days this week, according to figures released by the UN’S migration agency on Sunday.
Since April 2023, Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have waged what the UN has called a “war of atrocities,” killing tens of thousands of people and uprooting more than 11 million.
Between Dec. 25 and 26, attacks on the villages of Um Baru and Kernoi near Sudan’s western border with Chad displaced more than 7,000 people, according to the International Organization for Migration.
After its takeover of the North Darfur capital of El-Fasher in October, the RSF has pushed westward in recent days, through enclaves inhabited by the Zaghawa ethnic group and controlled by a militia.
Between Christmas Eve and Friday, a further 3,100 people were displaced from the famine-stricken city of Kadugli in South Kordofan, which has been under siege by paramilitary forces for over a year and a half.
Resource-rich Kordofan is currently experiencing the fiercest fighting, as the RSF and its allies seek to recapture Sudan’s central corridor, which runs from Darfur back toward the capital, Khartoum.
The conflict has created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
It has also effectively split Sudan in two, with the army controlling the north, east, and center while the RSF dominates all five state capitals in Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.
