In my last post, I mentioned the then breaking story that the Pakistan Telecomm Authority was in the process of blocking YouTube from the country. The "reason" given a video that was disrespectful to "An Hazrat, Maulana Mohammad, Rasul Allah", as we are wont to say in Pakistan, or "The Gentleman, Our Lord, Mohammad, Prophet of God". Of course, amongst our wonderful, patriotic Pakistanis, there were the immediate questions about whether that in itself was a rumour or documented. Well, please do take a look at one of the documents that went out from the Pakistan Telecomm Authority to the ISP's on Siliconstani's blog.
The suspicions on the part of the grapevine is that this blocking/censorship happened when it happened because of videos that were ending up on YouTube of vote rigging--both in Karachi and Lahore and elsewhere. Though the brunt of the suspicion is about videos of rigging in Karachi, and pro- the MQM.
But, wait! There's more!!! Breaking news right now is that the way the regulatory organizations for the Internet in Pakistan went about blocking YouTube has caused an outage/inaccessibility of the site globally! Check out the BBC report here:
The first thing that went through my head when I saw that story was that people like me often hear from fellow Pakistani expats that we should not discuss our home country's dirty laundry in public--you know, like raising Internet censorship at meetings where Pakistan's technology industry is being discussed. I wonder what they think of sweeping our issue under the rug till a SNAFU like this happens does for the much-maligned Image of Pakistan that our PUPPIES (Pakistani Yuppies) keep talking about.
Interesting thing is, as I was saying earlier to someone, this case illustrates beautifully the issues related to censorship. If you accept that censorship is okay in some circumstances (the one that the British set the precedent for in South Asia just happens to be hurting the sensibilities of major communities--today's Shining India also continues to ban stuff on that basis, from Rushdie to blogs), then governments will inevitably use the power either ineptly, or maliciously.
Now, I am not one to buy into American exceptionalism, and am often the one in a discussion amongst immigrants to challenge the "Milk and Honey" view of our lives in this country, but the First Amendment to the US Constitution is written the way it is for a reason: "Congress shall make NO law restricting the freedom of speech". No if's, and's and but's; it's something even the US Supreme Court has never really lived up to. There is no such thing, as someone once said, as "being a little bit pregnant". Either you're okay with censorship, or you aren't.
The right way to control harmful speech, or offensive speech is NOT governmental control. It is in society; if you're offended, use the avenues reserved for that offense. If you harmed, use the methods for restitution of that harm. In some societies, it is law suits and other legal action (used to be that was what Muslims believed in, too); in others it is duels with a choice of weapon at dawn.
I am sorry, but I have paid a personal price in my life because I refused to live in the Gulf. Both my dear mother and my father-in-law would have loved it for me to take a job there and be nearer to them. And as for Pakistan, I cannot with a straight face keep on complaining about a "Show Cause Notice" from the Zia Regime for a small, very small Christmas message I put on the Contents page of a youth magazine in 1987 and yet say it is okay to block YouTube or Facebook. My conscience won't let me. If I am okay with the latter, then I should be okay with the former.
Censorship is censorship. If you're okay with censorship, please say so. I am not.
There's an old (from our youth :p) Bollywood song that goes "Main ro'oon ya hansoon; karoon mai kyaa karoon?!" or "Should I cry or laugh; To do, what do I do?"
Users subscribing to the Internet though the PTCL (Pakistan Telecom Corporation Limited, the semi- or formerly-government-owned corporation), in particular, have been getting the following message today if they tried to access YouTube:
-------------- Dear Internet Users
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (www.pta.gov.pk)has directed all ISPs of the country to block access to www.youtube.com web site for containing blasphemous web content/movies.
The site would remain blocked till further orders from PTA. 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 web site.
Best Regards
Manager Technical Assistance Center Micronet Broadband Pvt. Ltd. Islamabad -------------
Geo Taken Off the Air by the UAE...but how is this surprising?
The word going around about the Dubai/UAE government forcing the Geo Television Network (or parts thereof) off the air is "shocking"...
Miriam Webster defines "shocking" as " extremely startling, distressing, or offensive".
Offensive, yes. But startling? Unless you were--and most of us were--in denial, how is this startling? Distressing, well, if your world view was built on absolute monarchies doing the right thing more often than not, than yes, I can see how it would distress you to see them do othewise.
Startled I am not. My dear mother would have loved for me to live and work in the Gulf and I always said “Pinjra pinjra ho tha hai; chahay sonay ka ho.” [A cage is a cage, even if it is made of gold.] The places are absolute monarchies and they have always had very good relations with Pakistani governments, especially absolute Pakistani governments.
Into the marketplace with bejewelled limbs we go...
... so said Faiz Ahmed Faiz, probably the most popular poet of revolution in the latter half of the 20th century in South Asia; Pakistan, India, and particularly on the Left.
South Asia has a very rich tradition of poetry, one which draws on both the spiritual tradition that gave the world Rumi and Khayyam, and the revolutionary spirit of the last century or two. And because of the Sufi tradition it is steeped in, allegory, depth of meaning, and multi-faceted verbiage is the norm, rather than the exception. The words "Aaj bazaar main pa-bajaolaan chalo..." are probably some of the most recognized word. The "jewels" being described are, for the uninitiated, the ball and chain of oppression. Here's the poet himself reciting the poem, with English sub-titles, followed by one of the best renditions of the poem with music, in this case with an overlay of dramatic video:
[You can read the piece by Dr. Adil Najam, where I first found this video, here.]
But wait, the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists has sent out a poster that puts these words above a poster that just needs to be seen to be believed. You couldn't, as we say, make this stuff up:
Please check in regularly at WikiPakistan's Emergency 2007 pages:
It seems that the utter stupidity of the blocking of websites in Pakistan has gotten to a point where even the mainstream media (I never thought I would use that phrase for a Pakistani newspaper) has noticed: And then, on Monday:
ISPs lose business; email-users run out of patience
By Naveed Ahmad
ISLAMABAD: The country's IT-enabled industry continued to face financial losses while the common user went through agonizing times for the fifth consecutive day while accessing some leading business-critical websites as the PTCL failed to unblock the Internet Protocols (IPs) at its gateway exchange.
The News learnt from an assortment of leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other IT-dependent businesses that such companies have suffered 20 to 30 per cent revenue loss over the past five days. The ISPs have been the worst hit as the outage of websites was directly proportionate to the use of Internet, thus slashing their businesses.
The Internet-users have been facing problems intermittently in accessing vital web-based email servers, business and information portals
In trying to abide by the Supreme Court order of filtering certain websites containing blasphemous content "at all costs", the PTCL blocked access to thousands of vital websites and email servers on February 28.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had passed on the same orders to the PTCL for action and denial of access to such derogatory websites.
While the PTA directions are binding for a service provider, the implementation details are left to the management of PTCL, who went for overkill by blindly blocking the Internet Protocol addresses en block instead of filtering the content on questionable websites.
The News has been persistently trying getting the PTCL side of the story about en masse blocking of vital websites but neither the corporate communications department nor Senior Executive Vice President (IT) Ameer-ud-Din cared to call back.
Sources told The News that the ministry of IT&T has taken any action so far over the situation. Secretary Farrukh Qayyum is in the United States over the past week. The national regulator has been maintaining a strange mum over the issue as well while the PTCL officials privately blame the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority for the embarrassing situation.
However, slight improvement in accessing certain blocked websites is being witnessed around the time of filing of this report by this correspondent. Over the past four days, the whole system had collapsed and owing to the routing and blocking flaws resulting in sporadic and random outage of the key websites. Simple websites which are not on the Akmai (and other domains mentioned) also remain affected. According to some observers, the whole system crawled to perhaps 30% to 40 per cent of capacity.
Sources said, "Since the PTCL did not have a proper anomaly detection system in place and their technical people were not empowered appropriately inform the chain of command, the disaster-like situation could have been averted."
The affected websites included google.com, download.com, Microsoft.com, gmail.com, yahoo.com, BBC, CNN, Systematic, Akamai, PC World, MTV, Best Buy, Logitech, ESPN amongst hundreds of thousands other.
Over the past four days, emails of Internet-users through web-based servers remained blocked which had been disappearing in the cyberspace.
The mid-level PTCL techies have been brushing the issue under carpet and instead sleeping over it. "Whenever a complaint is lodged, the PTCL officials are found in a denial mode," said a top IT professional, working at the Software Technology Park II.
In his emails to the industry, a PTCL official has been denying receiving any complaint about delay or packet drop was received from other customers. The same PTCL official, in his mass email, admitted, "Some of AKAMAI server Internet Protocols (IPs) got blocked as a consequence of directives to block obnoxious/objectives. This may be the cause of slow browsing because single website links are hosted on different IPs."
Meanwhile, the capital was abuzz with rumours of massive virus [distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.
WadiWallah
Life, technology and getting by in Silicon Valley Rickshaw!
The Id of South Asia Urdu ke Naam
A collaborative blog dedicated to the language of Urdu Cemendtaur
A Silicon Valley writer trapped in an engineer's body Khaab Khayaal Saraab
Raw train of thought waiting to get in to this blog Azad South Asia
Parent of This Blog DesiCritics.org
iFaqeer contributes to this member of the Blogcritics.org family of sites, covering media, culture, politics, sports and more with a global South Asian focus.
