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Pakistan blocks Wikipedia after it crosses 48 hours deadline: Report

Pakistan blocked Wikipedia after the website refused to remove offensive or blasphemous material.

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Annesha Barua
New Update
Pakistan blocks Wikipedia after it crosses 48 hours deadline: Report
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Islamabad, February 4: According to media reports on Saturday, Pakistan blocked Wikipedia the online encyclopedia. Pakistan blocked Wikipedia as it refused to remove offensive or blasphemous material. 

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Pakistan blocked Wikipedia as Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) degraded Wikipedia services for 48 hours, as it was reported in the newspaper after threatening to block it if the content deemed blasphemous' was not deleted.



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On late Friday night when a PTA spokesperson was contacted and inquired about the blocking of Wikipedia, the official confirmed that ‘yes it had been blocked’. This step was taken on the instruction of high court, the PTA. This instruction was given on Wednesday which degraded disrupting and slowing access to the encyclopedia website for 48 hours because there was blasphemous content on it.

This online worldwide encyclopedia is been created and edited by volunteers all over and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. 

A Pakistan Telecom Authority spokesperson Malahat Obaid further said that the ban had primarily been imposed for non-compliance with the orders, the Dawn newspaper reported.

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"The decision can be reviewed once Wikipedia removes sacrilegious content that has been identified by the regulatory authority," the spokesperson further said.

Wikipedia was approached for removing a content by issuing a notice PTA spokesperson stated. There was also a hearing provided; however, the platform neither complied by removing the blasphemous content nor appeared before the authority.

There was a failure on the international front, thus the services of Wikipedia were degraded for 48 hours with the direction to remove the reported contents. On Saturday, the Wikimedia Foundation said, "it does not make decisions around what content is included on Wikipedia or how that content is maintained".

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It further added that this is "by design to ensure that articles are the result of many people coming together to determine what information should be presented on the site, resulting in richer, more neutral articles".

"We hope that the Pakistan government joins with the Wikimedia Foundation in a commitment to knowledge as a human right and restores access to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects promptly so that the people of Pakistan can continue to receive and share knowledge with the world," it said.

Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan.

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- With inputs from agencies
pakistan-blocked-wikipedia pakistan-telecom-authority wikimedia-foundation
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