YouTube service disrupted in Pakistan ahead of Imran Khan's Peshawar address
Sep 06, 2022
Islamabad [Pakistan], September 6 : Ahead of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan's address at a party power show in Peshawar, YouTube service was disrupted in parts of Pakistan on Tuesday evening.
The news of the outage was confirmed by internet tracker NetBlocks on Twitter, the Dawn newspaper reported.
The disruption comes as former PM Imran Khan made a live broadcast to the public, despite a ban issued by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA).
"Confirmed: Metrics corroborate reports of a new disruption to YouTube in #Pakistan; the incident comes as former PM Imran Khan appears on screen to live stream a speech on the platform, following a pattern observed in August #PeshawarJalsa," NetBlocks tweeted.
PTI leader Fawad Ahmed Chaudhry slammed the outage, and tweeted, "Pakistan is now officially turned into a Banana republic all channels banned to telecast @ImranKhanPTI speech and PTA has blocked @YouTube in Pakistan."
According to NetBlocks, real-time network data show the disruption in effect on some but not all mobile and fixed-line internet providers in Pakistan during the live-streamed speech. Access was restored after the speech concluded, the internet tracker said.
This internet outage comes a day after the Pakistan media authority ordered the closure of Karachi-based media conglomerate Bol News, citing failure to secure security clearance from the interior ministry.
Pemra closed down transmission of Bol News and Bol Entertainment after revoking the licences of the channel, the Dawn newspaper reported. The media authority said that the matter had been pending before the Sindh High Court until last year.
"Hence, the Pemra reviewed all records, court orders, and notices from the interior ministry and subsequently decided to revoke licences issued to Labbaik (Pvt) Ltd (Bol News and Bol Entertainment) with immediate effect," the order read, as quoted by Dawn.
Imran Khan, who is embroiled in the political slugfest with the coalition government said Shehbaz Sharif's government has taken media censorship to fascistic levels.
"Imported govt has taken media and journalists' censorship and persecution to fascistic levels. Now Bol has been suspended simply because it gave us coverage. Message to all media houses is to blackout the largest & most popular national pol party from mainstream media. Unacceptable," Khan tweeted.
Pakistan is one of the world's deadliest countries for journalists, according to Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Under the guise of protecting journalism, Pakistani law is used to censor any criticism of the government and the armed forces. The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), created in 2002, is concerned less with regulating the media sector than with regulating the content it publishes, according to RSF.
As a result of these ambiguously worded laws, journalists who cross the implicit lines dictated by the authorities are exposed to heavy administrative and criminal penalties - up to three years in prison for "sedition", for example.
