Adil Najam
This news is not yet confirmed so I want to be careful about how I phrase it. Careful, but not silent.
Reportedly, the official ban on blogspot.com blog sites that had originally been imposed after the Danish cartoon controversy and was reportedly lifted earlier this month, is now back on and blogspot sites in Pakistan have been blocked again.
One rumor in the emails floating around is that this may be related to the crisis unleashed by the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti. Another explanation is that the ban had never been really lifted but changed made by blogspot.com had briefly made the sites accessible again in Pakistan, and now the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has become wise of those changes and clamped down on them.
If the news is correct, people in Pakistan will again be unable to directly access any blog hosted by blogspot.com; which is the majority.
Readers and bloggers in Pakistan, can you please confirm if this is true?
Please tell me I am wrong. I hope that the PTA has the good sense not to go down this senseless path again.
I am clinging to the hope that the news may be wrong because the people who run the ‘Don’t Block the Blog’ campaign in Pakistan don’t have anything on this on their site yet, but that is probably because they want to be absolutely sure if this has actually happened. I want to be sure that it hasn’t.
The ingenuity of the Pakistani mind had, in fact, devised ways to circumvent the ban and had even created similar tools for bloggers in India when the Indian government took similar steps to ban blogs after the recent Mumbai bombings.
The idea of such a ban, for whatever reason, is absolutely absurd and futile – largely because it causes inconvenience and resentment but does not really change anything.
Once again, PTA, please prove this news wrong!
[...] I have written about this issue before (here and here) and will probably write again. Even though it is clear that it will do little good. But, at least, bhaRRas tou niklay gi! [...]