The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Saturday directed the Ministry of Information Technology (IT) and Telecommunication to convene a meeting to discuss the removal of objectionable material from YouTube.
Hearing petitions seeking to unblock the video sharing website, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah asked State Minister Anusha Rehman to invite all stakeholders to the meeting in order to resolve the matter. Earlier, lawyers pleading against the ban said that government blocked the entire site instead of removing objectionable material. The hearing was later adjourned till May 13.
YouTube was banned in Pakistan in September 2012 over a controversial video clip, called “Innocence of Muslims,” which desecrated Prophet Muhammad (PBH) and triggered violent protests in the country. The country’s telecom regulator said it was blocking the entire site as it was not able to separately block individual URLs (uniform resource locators) linking to copies of the video. – SAMAA
