Suspension of X in Pakistan enters 4th week

Lahore: Suspension of popular microblogging platform X in Pakistan entered the fourth week on Friday after it was enforced apparently to forestall the “propaganda” of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s party that accused the PML-N of a ‘massive rigging’ in the February 8 polls.

Neither the previous caretaker government nor the new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s administration is ready to offer any reason as to why the country is seeing the suspension of X for such a long period.

Despite the Sindh High Court directing the restoration of citizens’ access to popular social media service X, it has remained inaccessible in Pakistan for more than three weeks.

Although such decisions are usually officially justified by the authorities based on some pretext or the other, this time around the state does not seem too bothered about providing any explanation as to why users are being denied access to X.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) regulates internet access in the country. The PTA, however, flatly denies that X is blocked.

“If the country’s top regulator is claiming that it is not doing the blocking, who is then preventing access to X?,” asked the PTI, adding that X is a valuable source of information for millions and access to it cannot be denied arbitrarily.