Pakistan blocks over 700 anti-Islam You Tube links

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Islamabad, Sept. 17, IRNA -- Pakistan on Monday blocked nearly 753 links to a recently released anti-Islam film on YouTube that has sparked anti-US protests across the Muslim world, officials said.

The decision was taken after the Supreme Court issued orders to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block links to the movie.

The chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, had directed PTA to take down all sacrilegious material that disrespects Islam or Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in any way and had directed the Director-General of PTA to submit a report.

The Director General of PTA said that almost 100 new clips of the anti-Islam film are proliferated on YouTube every day.

He said that the PTA had written a letter to YouTube, requesting the removal of such clips, but the video-sharing website replied saying that it does not have any such agreement with the government of Pakistan.

Justice Chaudhry had directed the Pakistan Electronic Media Regularity Authority (Pemra) to set up “standards of modesty” and submit a reply in this regard within two weeks.

The government earlier had claimed that the PTA and Information Technology Ministry had blocked 122 anti-Islamic websites during the past few days.

The authorities had also told the public that any blasphemous material that comes to their attention must be reported immediately to the PTA through phone or email.

The government had clarified that it was not blocking popular websites YouTube and Facebook, only anti-Islamic material. It had added that obscene material shall be blocked on case to case basis.

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Islamic Republic News Agency/IRNA NewsCode: 1027798