Officials:Pakistan Blocks YouTube For ‘Blasphemous’ Content-AFP

Feb.24, 2008 in Market Outlook

Last Update: 2/24/2008 5:42:48 AM

ISLAMABAD (AFP)–Pakistan has ordered all Internet service providers to block the
YouTube Web site for containing “blasphemous” content and material considered
offensive to Islam, officials said Sunday.

An inter-ministerial committee has decided to block YouTube, a division of Google
Inc. (GOOG), because it contained “blasphemous content, videos and documents,” a
government official told AFP.

“The site will remain blocked till further orders,” he said.

Other officials said the site had been blocked because it contained controversial
sketches of the Prophet Mohammed that were republished by Danish newspapers
earlier this month.

One major service provider, Micronet, said in an email to subscribers that the
Pakistan Telecommunications Authority had directed all ISPs to block access to
YouTube “for containing blasphemous web content/movies.”

“Meanwhile Internet users can write to YouTube.com to remove the objectionable
web content/movies because this removal would enable the authorities to order
un-blocking of this website,” the email said.

At least 17 Danish newspapers republished the controversial drawing, vowing to
defend freedom of expression a day after Danish police said they had foiled a
plot to murder the cartoonist.

In the latest in a series of demonstrations over the cartoons in Pakistan,
activists from a hardline Islamic organization burned a Danish flag in the the
southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Sunday.

“It is a deliberate attempt to malign Islam and hurt the feelings of Muslims,”
Habib Shah Kerani told the protesters from the Anjman-e-Islam (Organisation of
Islam) group.

They also demanded the government close Danish missions in Islamabad and sever
diplomatic relations, witnesses said.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 24, 2008 05:42 ET (10:42 GMT)

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