Bangladesh and Pakistan blocks Facebook

In the second half of May 2010, the entire Facebook domain was blocked in Bangladesh and Pakistan mainly because of cartoons of Prophet Muhammad posted on it.

On May 19, the court in Pakistan ordered to block Facebook due to a competition in which people were encouraged to upload cartoons of Prophet Muhammad; the order was also issued in compliance with the Islamic Lawyers Movement’s call to do so and as a response to demonstrations of journalists outside the Parliament, against the site. The court ordered the country’s Telecommunications Authority to respond to the movement’s plea until May 31. YouTube was also blocked, as well as certain pages on Flickr and on Wikipedia for the same reason: a page presenting a competition featuring drawings of Prophet Muhammad.

On May 29, Facebook was blocked in Bangladesh following a demand on behalf of three Islamic parties, and also because of unflattering cartoons of key figures in the country, which were uploaded by a local young man, who was consequently arrested in the capital by the authorities. Following these events, students demonstrated in the capital demanding to remove the website blocking.

Bangladesh authorities noted the blocking was temporary and would be removed as soon as the offensive images hurting the country’s religious feelings were removed. The blocking was finally removed on June 7.

It should be noted that recently it was reported that Facebook is the world’s most popular website, with over half a billion users: 75 thousands of them are from Bangladesh while 2.3 million are from Pakistan.

In February 2007, Pakistan blocked YouTube due to video clips that hurt Muslim feelings. The Dutch film ‘Fitna’ and the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad published in the Danish press were the cause. However, that blocking was removed within a few days.

This post is also available in: Deutsch עברית Kurdish Română