Pakistan may look to change its constitution in an attempt to remove the blasphemous content which is present on the internet. Standing Senate committee on information technology and telecommunications have offered PTA its complete assistance on amending the Constitution in an attempt to deal with the blasphemous content which is present all over the internet.
The chairman of PTA, Mr. Ismail Shah in the meeting revealed that 25 officers are working together to eliminate the blasphemous content present on the internet, and responding to complaints by the public, the authority has taken action against many of the links containing blasphemous content.
According to Mr. Shah, around 15% of the blasphemous content present on the internet is due to Facebook, and these rest 85 percent can be found all across the internet, on other websites. Prior to this, IHC also asked authorities to ban the social media websites, if that is what it took to get rid of the blasphemous content.
Interior minister, Mr. Chaudhary Nisar also met with 27 envoys from Muslim countries, in order to discuss the problems associated with the blasphemous content. The situation is so serious that a delegation from Facebook will very likely visit Pakistan in the near future to discuss the problem, with the concerned authorities.
The sentiments of Muslims were hurt due to the presence of blasphemous content present on Facebook, and Ms. Anusha Rahman, the minister of IT called out a ban on Facebook, just like the one YouTube had suffered not so long ago.
Latest progress of the case
The Interior Ministry submitted the report in the IHC that the Facebook authorities have banned 85% of the blasphemous content from the social media site. Also, the ambassadors of 27 Muslims were taken on board regarding the issues. They were also informed about the measures that the government has been taking since the issue started. The Embassy of Pakistan in Washington has also taken up the matter with the US government.
A 25 member team of the PTA is also working on locating the blasphemous pages on Facebook. So far, action has been taken against 40 such pages.
