Pakistan blocks, then restores, Twitter access - Washington Post (blog)

Malik, a regular Twitter user, told the Post on Sunday evening that Prime Minister Raza Yousuf Gilani ordered Pakistan's information technology ministry to restore access to the site.

The offensive tweets apparently referenced "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," a competition on Facebook that Muslims worldwide have denounced for encouraging depictions of Islam's prophet, which adherents consider blasphemous. A Pakistani court ordered the Facebook page blocked two years ago when the competition was launched.

It was not immediately clear who in the government directed that the site be blocked on Sunday afternoon, but "this is not a simple decision, it is a high-level decision," said Mohammad Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority.

Some Pakistani Twitter users immediately downloaded software to circumvent the ban, while others were able to tweet via smartphones.

"As a citizen of #Pakistan and as a former journalist I condemn the blocking of #Twitter. Freedom of speech is an inviolable right," tweeted Farahnaz Ispahani, a member of Parliament and media advisor to President Asif Ali Zardari.

In negotiations with Pakistani officials, Facebook agreed to continue to prevent the "Draw Mohammed" page from being accessed in Pakistan, but Yaseen said Twitter would not cooperate. That led to a directive from the Ministry of Information and Technology that ordered telecom providers to block Twitter access in the country.

Officials began negotiating Saturday evening with Twitter "to remove this content, this objectionable Web site which is objectionable to the Muslims of this country," Yaseen said.

Twitter officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

"Will start looking into it," tweeted Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, Sherry Rehman, who was in Chicago Sunday for the opening of the NATO Summit focused on the future of Afghanistan.

"The fact that despite their 'Twitter Ban', we are still tweeting from Pakistan, should tell them how stupid it is to censor [the] internet," Marvi Sirmed, a human rights activist and member of a national media monitoring committee, said in a tweet.

"I am so ashamed of my information technology ministry," she added in an interview. "It shows how ignorant they are. I am so enraged at this point in time. It is making Pakistan a laughingstock of the entire world."

Some Twitter regulars suggested that the government blocked the site to appease religious fundamentalists, but Cyril Almeida, a columnist at the daily Dawn newspaper, blamed bureaucratic bungling.

"This is what happens when you have a government that doesn't know how to do anything right," Almeida said. "Somebody somewhere had the authority to do it and went ahead and did it, without some grand conspiracy."

The "Draw Mohammed" contest was started by a Seattle artist, Molly Norris, who created a cartoon with everyday objects — including a cup of coffee and a spool of thread— each claiming to be the likeness of the Islamic prophet. She created the illustration in response to threats made against the Comedy Central show "South Park" for depicting Mohammad in a bear suit.

Malik said Pakistan registered a protest with Twitter and sought an apology for "this contest of blasphemous caricatures."

Correspondents Shaiq Hussain the Michele Langevine Leiby in Islamabad contributed to this report.