Pakistan’s efforts to stem online blasphemy and pornography have run up against a formidable opponent in the form of an American porn star, furious that her Twitter account has been blocked in the country.
Miriam Weeks, a student at Duke University, who goes by the name Belle Knox, was among users whose accounts were banned in the country for “blasphemous” or “unethical” content.
The issue has provoked anger among free speech campaigners, who accuse censors of overstepping the law in arbitrarily removing content from the internet.
Miss Weeks singled out Abdul Batin, the bureaucrat at the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA), who wrote to Twitter demanding the content be removed.
“I believe Mr Batin has a problem with me because for whatever reason, I am his poster child: a woman with her own agency and free expression, some icon of perceived cultural degeneration that he feels he can censor to feel better about himself,” she wrote in an email to Forbes.com.
“If he thinks I am a soft target, he’s going to be surprised. I stand up for sex workers, and will continue to do so because I feel that often, we’re disregarded as casualties.”
However, Miss Weeks added that her own problems were insignificant in comparison with political groups being silenced.
Pakistan is one of a number of countries struggling to come to terms with online freedoms. It has blocked Twitter and Facebook in the past for spreading supposedly blasphemous content, while YouTube has been banned for the past 18 months.
The proliferation of pornographic websites has proved a particular headache. At one time authorities were forced to call in a 15-year-old boy for help after he complained that he had been able to access 780,000 adult pages from Pakistan – a country whose name means “the land of the pure”.
Now censors are grappling with how to extend the country’s draconian blasphemy laws to websites.
The PTA submitted at least five requests between May 5 and 14 asking Twitter to block specific tweets and accounts for users in Pakistan, according to Chilling Effects, an online watchdog.
The material included an annual contest to draw the Prophet Mohammed – an issue which led to complete Twitter and Facebook bans in 2012.
This time Belle Knox and two other porn stars were also included.
Users are met with the message: “This account has been withheld in Pakistan.”
Twitter says its “country withheld content” policy is based on transparency.
“With hundreds of millions of Tweets posted every day around the world, our goal is to respect our users’ expression, while also taking into consideration applicable local laws,” it says.
However, internet freedom campaigners fear Pakistan can use such tools to stem political freedoms.
“A lot of political dissent has been blocked under the garb of blocking antireligious or antinational content, disregarding citizens’ right to information and the need for transparency and accountability,” said Bolo Bhi, which campaigns against online restrictions and has counted more than 15,000 blocked sites.
Re: American porn star takes on Pakistan’s censors
If she is so desperate to reach out to Pakistani market, she could use hundreds of other online services. She got cheap publicity because of the ban though and should be thankful to Mr. Batin.
Nobody knew bella Knox in Pakistan or elsewhere before Mr bartan banned her account. Now she is going to become the ambassador of free speech, will be invited to speak at human rights rallies, will get tons of money in endorsement, become a playboy centerfold, and then youth of Pakistan will enjoy her nude display on playboy dot com.
Jack assess is the only term comes to my mind for mr bartan and his agency.
Re: American porn star takes on Pakistan’s censors
Reminds me of this conversation I had with someone online ages back. They were posting (or ‘raising awareness’ as they called it) about this obscure story about this preacher saying something against Islam. Idioctic, as they were raising awareness for somrthing that noone knew about in the first place and hence giving an anti-Islamic bigot even more platform to spit his venom.
Re: American porn star takes on Pakistan’s censors
^ point taken. But don’t you think bigots should be shamed and exposed? Even though he got free publicity, he probably got shamed into cutting down on his bigotry (I hope)
Re: American porn star takes on Pakistan’s censors
I quite agree. When every incident, no matter how obscure or minor, is presented as a major human rights crisis, it trivialises the real human rights crises and makes people skeptical when these do happen. Rather like the boy who cried wolf.
Re: American porn star takes on Pakistan’s censors
Here’s the way I see it. If I’m Muslim, and I’m supposed to theoretically live my life by the Quran and Rasul (SAW)'s example, then what would they have done?
I’m pretty sure our beloved Prophet would have ignored this stuff and moved on to spread a message of love and tolerance. Maybe he might have sent a polite email to this woman, and others, explaining his angle of thought, and then wished her a good day.
And probably then, there would have been some chance she might have been so impressed by his mannerisms, that it would have been the other way around. She would have been giving us publicity.
