YouTube banned in Pakistan over 'sacrilegious content'
YouTube banned in Pakistan in growing row between country's authorities and internet
Thursday, 20, May 2010 06:23
By Matthew Champion.
YouTube has been blocked in Pakistan in a growing row between the country's authorities and internet users that has already seen Facebook banned.
Access to the video-sharing website was restricted on Thursday over what the Pakistan telecommunications authority called "growing sacrilegious content".
It was not immediately clear what offending material on YouTube had prompted the ban.
According to reports from Pakistan, large sections of online encyclopaedia Wikipedia are also unavailable.
On Wednesday a court ordered a temporary ban on social networking website Facebook, which has 45 million users in Pakistan.
The ban was imposed after a group was set up encouraging people to draw their own pictures of the Prophet Muhammad.
By Thursday Everybody Draw Muhammad Day had more than 80,000 members.
"We strongly condemn the publication of blasphemous caricatures of our holy Prophet on Facebook," said Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit.
"They are committing these acts in the garb of freedom of press, which is not acceptable to us."
Islam strictly prohibits any depictions of Muhammad as blasphemous, with 50 people dying around the Muslim world in 2005 in riots triggered by the publication of caricatures of the Prophet in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
Al-Qaida also claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at the Danish embassy in Islamabad in 2008 that killed eight.