Pak govt. reluctant to lift YouTube ban amid political turmoil

Islamabad: The Pakistani government has shown reluctance in uplifting the year-long YouTube ban amid the political turmoil in the nation, even after the blasphemous content has been removed and filters have been put in place to monitor any pornographic content online. The Ministry of Information Technology acquired the hardware and the software to control the internet, but the YouTube is still kept blocked as the government is not able to ignore the repercussions, the Express Tribune reports. A high ranking official at the IT ministry, meanwhile, said that they were about to convene a meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) over the issue, but it got delayed due to the recent sectarian clashes in the nation.

He further added that the government is afraid of facing the backlash, if it lifts the ban from the video sharing website in such crucial circumstances. YouTube was blocked in September 2012 after the controversial film `Innocence of Muslims` went viral in Pakistan. The IT ministry had acquired the `missing` filters with the help of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) and blocked over 4,000 URLs containing the blasphemous content. The missing equipment for the monitoring of `grey traffic` was put in place last week to detect and block illegal international incoming voice calls to save losses of billions of rupees incurred by the national exchequer, the report added.