Pakistan blocks social media platforms after political unrest

Pakistan blocked access to popular social media sites on Friday ahead of an expected crackdown on Islamists who have protested this week against France over caricatures of the prophet Muhammad in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Nayatel, a popular Islamabad-based internet service provider, sent an SMS message to clients informing them that Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok and Telegram had been blocked in the country. Other service providers sent out similar messages.

A senior government official in the capital Islamabad told the Financial Times that the sites would be blocked until late on Friday as officials prepared for police action following midday prayers in the country.

“In recent days, we have noticed social media sites being used to provoke the protesters. Friday is a very important day, there is likely to be action against the protesters,” he said.

The official added that the scale of Friday’s blockade was unprecedented in Pakistan. “We have never before had to block all the main social media sites in this way.”

Last December, six people were found guilty in a Paris court of being accomplices to terrorism in the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo’s offices, in which 12 people were killed by two Islamist extremists. As the trial began, in a defiant gesture of free expression, the magazine republished the cartoons that had provoked the original attack.

The latest unrest in Pakistan was sparked after it became apparent that the government of prime minister Imran Khan would fail to deliver on a promise to hold a parliamentary discussion on relations between Pakistan and France by April 20. “The government has lied to us,” chanted some of the protesters this week as they clashed with police in Rawalpindi, a city that adjoins Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

The number of smartphone users across Pakistan, which has a population of nearly 220m, has grown rapidly in recent years. According to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the main regulator of cellular services, there are approximately 180m mobile phone users in the country, of whom 95m use 3G and 4G services via smartphones.

This fast-growing mobile phone usage has in turn rapidly increased the number of people using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which are used as major organising tools for protesters. According to Statista, there are 40m Facebook users in Pakistan.

Some critics say the government has failed to act quickly enough against the protesters. Last year, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), the rightwing Islamic group that first called the protests against Charlie Hebdo, urged the government to discuss future relations with France in Pakistan’s parliament.

TLP has also demanded the expulsion of the French ambassador from Pakistan, while the French government has asked all its citizens to leave Pakistan.

“Why did the government [of Pakistan] first practically appease these protesters who had no business demanding the French ambassador’s removal from Pakistan?” said Ayaz Amir, a former member of parliament and now popular political commentator.

“When you appease such people at first, then you are forced to take measures like shutting down the social media. This problem should have been handled much earlier,” he added.