The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) announced on Saturday that it had blocked the free online encyclopaedia after it failed to comply with a 48-hour ultimatum to remove ‘blasphemous content’.
It has not been divulged what the content is.
The BBC reports that the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, said the ban meant Pakistanis would be denied access ‘to the largest free knowledge repository’.
PTA spokesperson Malahat Obaid said Wikipedia failed to respond to ‘repeated correspondence’ over the removal of ‘blasphemous content’.
He added: ‘They did remove some of the material but not all’. The website would remain blocked until ‘all the objectionable material’ was removed.
According to the BBC, blasphemy is a highly sensitive and incendiary issue in Pakistan.
Other platforms including Tinder, Facebook and YouTube were previously blocked in the Muslim-majority country.
Free speech campaigners warned that there seemed to be ‘a concerted effort to exert greater control over content on the internet’.
Digital rights activist Usama Khilji said: ‘The main purpose is to silence any dissent. A lot of times blasphemy is weaponised for that purpose.’
YouTube was blocked in Pakistan in 2010 supposedly because of its ‘growing sacrilegious content’.
In the same year, Facebook was blocked over an internet campaign inviting people to draw images of the Prophet Muhammad.
Dating apps including Tinder and Grindr were also previously banned for disseminating ‘immoral content’.
[Photo: al Salaam]