A number of internet articles assert that in advance of the February 8 legislative election, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) political party’s official websites are inaccessible due to government blockage.
The assertion is accurate.
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On January 25, a social media user on platform X (formerly known as Twitter) tagged the interim minister for information technology and inquired as to why the PTI websites were unavailable in Pakistan.
“Dear Umar Saif, could you explain to Pakistanis why you have blocked these websites belonging to the most popular political party in the country?” Alongside the hashtags #RiggingAgainstPTI, the user wrote.
The X user mentioned insaf.pk and pticandidates.com as the two websites.
Almost 400,000 views and thousands of interactions have been received by this post on X.
The majority of Internet service providers (ISPs) in Pakistan have blocked the political party’s official website, insaf.pk, as well as a newly launched portal, pticandidates.com, which offers details about PTI’s candidates running in the 2024 general election, according to journalists and digital media experts.
Digital rights activist Usama Khilji informed Geo Fact Check over the phone that “most ISPs in Pakistan have blocked the PTI websites.” “The [websites] have been blocked using the Web Management System (WMS) as well as the Domain Network System (DNS).” The right to information is guaranteed by Article 19A, which is seriously violated in this case.
The fact that this was occurring in the lead-up to the elections, when voters rely heavily on websites, he continued, was troubling.
Khilji went on to inquire as to what legal framework the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) of the government was using to block the websites of political parties.
Khilji stated, “The PTA has recently claimed that it is using the Web Management System to’regulate’ content due to court orders and the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016; however, the political party’s websites do not fall under either a court order or a clause of the 2016 Act.”
The research think tank Bytes for All (B4A) in Islamabad was then contacted by Geo Fact Check.
Additionally, B4A verified that since January 24, Pakistan has been utilizing the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) blockage method to prevent access to both of PTI’s websites.
