Karachi: The sensitive nature of the controversy regarding Facebook, a social networking site, was on full display on Thursday, where emotions ran high leading to an altercation outside the Karachi Press Club.
Initially, civil society activists held a press conference questioning the extensive blocking of websites by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA), which they termed to be Internet censorship.
They said that the basic issue was of specific blasphemous pages — and therefore the specific URLs of those offensive pages should have been blocked instead of a blanket bar on websites.
The PTA had blocked many websites across Pakistan — many of which had no connection with the ongoing Blasphemy controversy, including search engine Google.com.
“What is the point of banning Facebook, Youtube and Flickr and other websites? We are against events and websites which incite violence and hatred. But instead of banning websites, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority could have had simply blocked the offensive webpage,” they argued.
They added that a number of small businesses, nonprofit organisations, media outlets use Facebook to conduct their everyday business. “All these businesses have now come to a standstill.
The action is having a negative impact on the country by infringing upon our civil liberties,” they said, adding that they would appeal against the decision after May 31 if the websites remain inaccessible.
However, the nature of the message being given during the press conference was apparently misconstrued — with violent consequences.
While the aforementioned press conference was being held inside the KPC, outside assembled protestors belonging to a religious group, the Tehreek Ahle-Hadith, to condemn Facebook.
The activists caught wind of the press conference inside the KPC, and turned violent. Verbal threats and heavy abuse turned into a physical attack on one of the civil society activists by the religious group. Some journalists present on the spot intervened and stymied an attempt to lynch the man by the enraged activists of the religious party, who then laid siege to the premises of the KPC — demanding that he be handed over to them.
The police arrived on the spot to control the situation — after which the civil society activists, including Sabeen Mahmud, director of Peace Niche, and bloggers Awab Alvi and Zaheer Kidvai, were whisked away.
Later, Awab Alvi, who was attacked by the religious party’s activists, said: “Just like the others, I am totally against the offensive webpage and condemn the event. However, [they] misunderstood my statement. I feel that PTA should have blocked the webpage and not the entire website.”
Meanwhile, different religious parties, including the Tehreek-e-Ahle Sunnat Jamaat-e-Islami, Tehreek Ahle Hadith and Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Pakistan, held protests for a second consecutive day in different parts of the city to condemn the blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet (PBUH), and supported the government’s move to ban Facebook.
Source: The News
Date:5/21/2010
