Has Pakistan's project of shutting down the Internet ceased? After the 'Draw the Prophet' fiasco in June, the usually stubborn Facebook made conciliatory noises to the Pakistani authorities, promising that this kind of thing won't happen again. The authorities in question quickly pronounced their victory, and lifted the ban. While clearly a face-saving dénouement for all involved, contrary to what's been reported, Facebook has not actually removed any of the 'offensive' content. Instead, it has simply blocked access to these pages for Pakistani IP addresses, something the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had done even before the case was brought before the Lahore High Court. The PTA also quietly restored service to the sites it had blocked early including YouTube and Wikipedia. This rollercoaster just goes round and round. Now, one 'Muhammad Siddiq' has petitioned the court to ban old targets like YouTube, search engine sites like Bing and Google, and – here's a new one – Amazon, as well as the anti-organised religion site In the name of Allah.
Just how much ill-will had Facebook garnered, anyway? MillatFacebook (or MFB), a Pakistan-based social-networking newcomer that targets the 'more than 1.57 billion Muslims and sweet people from other religions' is betting 'a whole lot'. Whether it will make a dent on the giant is questionable, (Facebook's credo: 'You can sign-out, but you can never leave'), but MFB has already attracted a few hundred thousand members. New users are greeted with 'We are Listening you carefully' – words that CP swears by. In an interview, CEO Omer Zaheer Meer of Global IT Vision, the company behind MillatFacebook, says that Islam has a 'branding problem'. True, but not helped by calling the other Facebook 'Mark Zukerberg's Zionist FB [sic!]' on the MFB site. Meanwhile, advocate Mohammad Azhar Siddique (why does that name sound familiar?), the chair of the Judicial Activism Panel and part of the MFB team, has filed a police case in Lahore against Zuckerberg for blasphemy, a crime that carries the death penalty. Sweet people, but this is business!
Once burned, Facebook is now also blocking access to the same pages for all users in India. A Facebook spokesperson stated that was being done in accordance with 'local regulations, standards and customs', implying that it was done at the request of the Indian government, though Indian officials have denied this. Not that New Delhi does not block sites deemed offensive or politically disagreeable, or that ban-happy groups have not made their own vociferous complaints to the government. The Mumbai-based Catholic Secular Forum, for instance, recently took some time off from their vital work of protesting Dan Brown franchises (gotta them credit: they take their pulp seriously) and blaming gays for molesting priests (and they have an article from a Catholic journal to prove it!) to join the fun. The Forum has officially requested New Delhi to block all Facebook pages critical of religion in general. But given that the content is still out there, though not accessible in Southasia, couldn't the easily offended simply have avoided the pages in the first place? All very mysterious, at least to Chhetria Secular Patrakar, who's pretty much a holey zero on all matters religious.
Kantipur is by far the largest-circulated daily in Nepal, and there is reason to believe that the Indian Embassy did not really see eye to eye with the paper's focus when it came to India coverage – recent matters having to do with the attacks on Nepali-speakers in Assam-Meghalaya and the canal works on the Kosi said to be endangering Nepali villages. There may even have been issues related to coverage of the Nepali Maoists, in the context of the growing battle between New Delhi and the Indian Maoists. Or, as one Indian paper suggested, is it the daily's position against the India-backed Madhav Kumar Nepal government? But, surely, none of this could be reason enough for the Indian government to work overtime to deny newsprint to a Nepali newspaper?