Pakistan blocks social media amid anti-France rally
Pakistan briefly blocked access to all social media on Friday, after days of anti-French protests across the country by radical Islamists opposed to cartoons, they consider blasphemous.
In a notice to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the Interior Ministry requested a “complete blocking” of Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, YouTube, and Telegram until 3 pm.
#Pakistan blocks social media platforms Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Telegram in the country from 11am–3pm Friday. pic.twitter.com/3O6X82IPJx
— Ayesha Tanzeem (@atanzeem) April 16, 2021
Pakistan internet users encountered difficulty accessing apps including WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter from Friday morning.
The move comes as police officials prepare to clear a large demonstration in the eastern city of Lahore, and just hours after the government said the now-detained leader of the outlawed Islamist political party at the forefront of the protests had urged his supporters to stand down
In a statement; Rizvi asked his supporters to peacefully disperse for the good of the country and end their main sit-in that began Monday, when police arrested the radical cleric for threatening protests if the government did not expel the French ambassador before April 20.
Rizvi’s arrest sparked violent protests by his followers, who disrupted traffic by staging sit-ins across the country.
Although security forces cleared almost all of the rallies, thousands of Rizvi’s followers are still assembled in Lahore, vowing to die in order to protect the honor of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed.
On Thursday, the French embassy in Pakistan advised all of its nationals and companies to temporarily leave the Islamic country, after violence erupted over Rizvi’s arrest.
Rizvi’s party has denounced French President Emmanuel Macron since October last year, saying he tried to defend blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad as freedom of expression. Macron had spoken after a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class.
The images had been republished by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo; to mark the opening of the trial over the deadly 2015 attack against the publication for the original caricatures.
That enraged many Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere who believe those depictions were blasphemous.
