As my colleague Salman Masood reported on Twitter, online rejoicing at the end of Pakistan's three-month ban on YouTube was short-lived on Saturday, as the government reimposed the ban shortly after it was lifted following reports that copies of a low-budget film mocking the Prophet Muhammad appeared in searches of the site.
YouTube unblocked in Pakistan after more than three months
Nothing good lasts forever. YouTube blocked back again.
Just hours after the assistant director of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered internet service providers to “immediately unblock/restore†YouTube, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf “issued orders to block YouTube again,†a senior official told Agence France-Presse.
According to Pakistani journalists, the prime minister decided to reinstate the ban after the television channel Geo News reported that Pakistanis could still view the “Innocence of Muslims†film on YouTube, despite claims that the government would block the clip using filtering software.
Don't want to ruin the party BUT ‘Innocence of Muslims' video links still accessible on YOU TUBE. Where is so called ‘blocking software' ??
Heh â€" “I searched on YouTube and the video was still there.†Don't search for it and you'll never find it geniuses!
Although Pakistani bloggers blamed Geo News for the reimposed ban, one of the channel's journalists who had searched for the offensive clip, Mansoor Ali Khan, mocked the government for the re versal and argued that he had only intended to demonstrate that the original ban had been ineffective. He noted that the prime minister acted less than 24 hours after Interior Minister Rehman Malik had announced that access to the site would be restored.
It looks like our PM and @SenRehmanMalik are acting like 2 KIDS sitting under a LIGHT SWITCH and playing ON/OFF with YOUTUBE
Congratulations #Pakistan: Our government can't even make simple decisions about opening websites and we expect them to tackle terrorism
@norbalm If I may? I tweeted that much b4 Geo sd that bt the reason ws to highlight that hw dumb was it to block it all along @mehrtarar
Another Geo News reporter, Maria Memon, wrote that she would not defend the role her station played in the debacle, but suggested that the some members of the government prefer to have the site blocked and had used the report as an excuse.
My two cents on Banning/Unbanning of youtube: They wanted it to stay blocked. Hence it was made sure that it remains blocked. Go figure.
The government's sudden reversals on Saturday caused several Pakistani commentators to bitterly denounce the country's leaders for pandering to religious fundamentalists.
wow! how powerful the PM of Pakistan is â€" he can block you tube.
The idiotic way in which YouTube was first unblocked, and then blocked after a few hrs is further proof that in Pak anything's possible
Dear #youtube the solution to the ban in #Pakistan is simple do what other banned groups do in #Pakistan and rename yourself e.g., tubeyou
In a post headlined “The Great YouTube Escapade,†the blogger Kala Kawa concluded:
A confluence of idiocy of the sort that we see on a regular basis in Pakistan has ruled again. Courts that have somehow come to believe that they represent the will of the people, create orders that limit our agency in one wave of their robe. Journalists who have inflated their sense of self to the point where they no longer recognize themselves, inform us of how we ought to behave in our private lives. A civilian government that proclaims itself to be secular bends to the will of every right-wing demand at the expense of those that are ideologically aligned with them.
Unfortunately, none of this is new to us. Even worse, this is far from the last time something like this will happen to us.
