ISLAMABAD: Twenty-eight civil society organizations, including Amnesty International and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) this week issued a joint statement, calling for the immediate restoration of social media platform X across the country.
X, formerly Twitter, first went down in Pakistan on Feb. 17 when a government official confessed to manipulating votes in the Feb. 8 general election. The admission came as former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and other political parties staged protests countrywide, alleging the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had rigged elections, which it denies.
X’s prolonged disruption has raised widespread concerns about the state of democratic freedoms in the country, with the United States and several international organizations urging Pakistan to provide unhindered Internet access and leading digital rights activists calling the blockade a “blatant violation” of civil liberties.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Ataullah Tarar denied this week there was a ban on X, saying that people were regularly posting on the social media platform.
“Amnesty International is one of 28 civil society organizations that have signed a joint statement calling for immediate restoration of the social media platform,” the global human rights agency said in a post on X on Saturday.
“And urge the Pakistani authorities to uphold the rights to freedom of expression and access to information under the country’s international human rights commitments.”
The joint statement features the signatures of 28 civil society organizations including the Digital Rights Foundation (DRF), Media Matters for Democracy (MMFD), HRCP, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) and others.
Issued on Friday, the statement expressed “profound concern” over the increasing incidences of Internet shutdowns and bans on social media platforms, especially in the days leading to the Feb. 8 election.
It also expressed alarm at the “complete silence” of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) for failing to furnish any reasons for its actions, accusing it of exceeding its mandate to block an entire Internet platform.
“We urge the incoming government, regulators and other public bodies to recognize that any action that affects the flow of information and limits citizen’s ability to express themselves, has a direct and lingering impact on citizen’s human rights including the right to political participation,” the statement read.
Before the latest blockade, Pakistan experienced multiple Internet disruptions in recent weeks that made social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, X and Instagram inaccessible. Recent occurrences were on Jan. 20, Jan. 7 and Dec. 17, when Khan’s PTI party was holding virtual events.
The government had blamed those disruptions on “technical glitches.” Such shutdowns have previously had a devastating impact on Pakistan’s economy. The day after Khan’s arrest in May last year, Reuters reported that point-of-sale transactions routed through Pakistan’s main digital payment systems fell by around 50 percent according to the region’s two largest payments system operators, 1LINK and Habib Bank Limited.