KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) has ordered the relevant authorities to guarantee that all residents have continuous access to the internet until the general elections on February 8.
The high court ordered the respondents to submit their answer by January 29 and prohibited the authorities from halting internet services in its judgment on Wednesday.
Jibran Nasir, a human rights activist and advocate, had petitioned the Supreme Court over the nation’s repeated suspension of internet connectivity.
Users have encountered several internet interruptions in the past several days as political canvassing intensifies in anticipation of the elections that will take place next month.
On January 20, there was a second outage of social media sites in two weeks, including Facebook, X, Instagram, and YouTube.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) attributed last week’s widespread internet outage to a “technical fault” in its optic fiber network, following an hours-long disruption.
The PTA posted the following on its official X account: “A technical issue that caused a recent disruption in internet services has been fixed swiftly. All around the country, internet services have been fully restored.
Google services and internet service provider PTCL were also affected, according to downdetector.pk.
A report claims that the state’s relationship with media freedoms has gotten worse over the last two years as a result of an increase in censorship incidents, violence against journalists, and government contempt for critical media.
Under Siege: Legislative, Judicial, and Executive Actions Stifling Freedom of Expression and Right to Information is the title of a report that was released.
Advocacy and Development (IRADA) as a component of its yearly Digital Journalism State of Play series.
The PTA blacklisted 1.1 million URLs, including 187 mobile applications, during the evaluation period. According to the study, over 200,000 of these restricted or removed URLs and content were allegedly associated with content that was hateful or sectarian, against Pakistan’s defense or the glory of Islam, or that was in contempt of court.
The study also reveals that the Pakistani government has requested that a large quantity of content be removed from major tech platforms, including Google, Meta, TikTok, and X (previously Twitter). For instance, from January 2021 to June 2022, Meta reportedly blocked access to 12,001 products in Pakistan that the PTA had flagged as potentially breaking local regulations.
