PAKISTAN SHUTS DOWN YOUTUBE

Grant Swank* | February 25, 2008

Filed Under Conservative Musings, General Politics

J. Grant Swank, Jr.

Some nations just cannot tolerate freedom of speech.

With that, Pakistan has shut down YouTube’s website. The officialdom has declared that it allows “anti-Islamic movies that users have posted on the site,” per AP.

Seventy Internet servers were informed that the site would be “blocked.”

The Internet has no doubt been one of the most forceful agents for worldwide communication, including the theme of freedom as experienced in democracies.

The youth in particular are being educated regarding the definition of personal liberty. They are wanting it. They are going to be the generation to demand change from despotism to democracy in one dictatorship after another. Older officials in despotic governments fear this, hence the clamp down.

Democracy nations’ leaders are traipsing about the globe in one mission or another in attempts to spread freedom’s message. Perhaps in addition to these flights the Internet is doing as much to reach grassroots youth caged in tyrants’ grasps.

Pakistan is afraid of what truth will do to its public; therefore, the shut down of YouTube.

“The official authority did not specify what the offensive material was, but a PTA official said the ban concerned a movie trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has said he plans to release an anti-Quran movie portraying the religion as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.

“The PTA official, who asked not to be identified because he was not an official spokesman, said the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority also blocks Web sites that show controversial drawings of the Prophet Muhammad.

“The drawings were originally printed in European newspapers in 2006 and were reprinted by some papers last week.

“The PTA urged Web users to write to YouTube and request the removal of the objectionable movies, saying authorities would stop blocking the site once that happened.

“Pakistan is not the only country to have blocked access to YouTube. In January, a court in Turkey blocked the site because some video clips allegedly insulted the country’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. It is illegal to insult Ataturk in Turkey.

“Last spring the Thai government banned the site for about four months because of clips seen as offensive to Thailand’s revered monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

“Moroccans last year were unable to access YouTube after users posted videos critical of Morocco’s treatment of the people of Western Sahara, a territory Morocco took control of in 1975.”

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