Islamabad: Pakistan government Friday
directed authorities to totally block 17 websites with
blasphemous content and to monitor seven other portals and ban
access to links with sacrilegious materials.
The instructions were issued to the Pakistan
Telecommunication Authority after an inter-ministerial
committee met to evaluate websites having anti-Islamic
content. The committee decided to completely block 17
websites.
It also decided that seven other websites, including
Google, MSN, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon and YouTube, would be
monitored and links on them with offensive content would be
blocked without disturbing the main portals.
Acting on the directives of the committee, the
Information Technology Ministry directed PTA to act against
the websites without any delay, officials said.
The inter-ministerial committee also said that
blocking of e-information needed by students and researchers
should be avoided.
The action taken by the government was a follow-up to
an order issued recently by the Bahawalpur bench of the Lahore
High Court.
Acting on a petition, the court had directed
authorities to take action against 24 websites for hosting
blasphemous and sacrilegious contents.
PTI
