LAHORE: As Pakistan marked one year of a ban on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), government officials hinted that the service is unlikely to be restored anytime soon.<\/p>\n
However, government departments continue to use the banned platform for official communications \u2014 ostensibly via virtual private networks (VPNs) \u2014 despite extolling curbs on the same for the general public.<\/p>\n
The social media platform, which was used by around 4.5 million people in Pakistan, was blocked in February 2024, around 10 days after the general elections, while the caretaker government was still in power.<\/p>\n
As users shared claims on X about alleged widespread rigging in the election, the final blow \u2014 leading to the complete shutdown \u2014 was a press conference by former Rawalpindi commissioner Liaquat Chattha, who accused Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja and the former chief justice of facilitating the rigging.<\/p>\n
PML-N leader says ban in place to rein in PTI\u2019s social media prowess; information minister refuses to give timeline for X restoration<\/p>\n
A year on, there are no indications that the government is considering lifting the ban on X, a PML-N leader from Punjab told Dawn.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lifting of the ban on X is subject to control the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf\u2019s (PTI) keyboard warriors\u2019 onslaught against it on social media,\u201d he remarked in a reference to the opposition party\u2019s social media team.<\/p>\n
Dawn reached out to Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, but he refused to give even a tentative timeframe for the restoration of the social media platform. However, Mr Tarar\u2019s own ministry and their counterparts in various government departments, such as the PM Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs et al continue to post official statements on the banned platform.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari had said the government might consider restoring X if social media rules and regulations are framed.<\/p>\n
When asked on Thursday whether the government is considering lifting the ban on X after the framing of new social media rules under the amended Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, she told Dawn the issue was the federal government\u2019s domain.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, if the social media rules and regulations start getting implemented, then such problems will be sorted out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a joint statement by civil society organisations, rights advocates, journalists and individuals has called for the immediate restoration of X and urged the government to refrain from taking such arbitrary measures in the future.<\/p>\n
The statement said the ban violated Article 19 of the Constitution and undermined Pakistan\u2019s international law commitments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LAHORE: As Pakistan marked one year of a ban on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), government officials hinted that the service is unlikely to be restored anytime soon. However, government departments continue to use the banned platform for official communications \u2014 ostensibly via virtual private networks (VPNs) \u2014 despite extolling curbs on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5826,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5827,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5825\/revisions\/5827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}