ISLAMABAD: Wikipedia was back online in Pakistan on Tuesday, after the prime minister of Pakistan ordered authorities to lift a block on the onlineencyclopedia over blasphemy, which is a sensitive issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan, and Facebook and YouTube have previously been banned for publishing content deemed sacrilegious.
Minister of Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb tweeted a copy of the order that said: The Prime Minister is pleased to direct that the website may be restored with immediate effect. The non-profit fund that manages Wikipedia told AFP on Monday that the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority PTA had been directed to restore access to Wikipedia and hoped to see online traffic in Pakistan soon. The PTA gave 48 hours to remove content deemed blasphemous before it blocked the website.
An agency spokesman said Saturday that Wikiwi will be blocked until they remove all objectionable material without specifying what content is at issue.
The website was once again accessible on Tuesday.
According to the order published Monday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had instructed a committee consisting of three government ministers to examine the decision of the PTA to block Wikipedia.
The committee found that the unintended consequences of the blanket ban outweigh its benefits, according to the document signed by the principal secretary to prime minister Syed Tauqir Shah.
It added that another ministerial committee would be set up to examine the issue.
The people of Pakistan rely on Wikipedia as a knowledge resource and a way to share their knowledge with others, a Wikimedia spokesperson said.
The organisation did not respond to an AFP query on whether it had taken any action to remove certain content.
In a previous statement, it said that the Wikimedia FoundationWikimedia Foundation does not make any decisions about what content is included on Wikipedia or how that content is maintained. It also supports editorial decisions made by the community of editors around the world.
Free speech campaigners have highlighted a pattern of rising government censorship of Pakistan's printed and electronic media.
Pakistan blocked YouTube from 2012 to 2016 after it showed a film about the Prophet Mohammed that led to violent protests across the Muslim world.
The country has also blocked the popular video-sharing app TikTok several times over in the past few years for indecent and immoral content.