The Dawn Newspaper (LAHORE Thursday, 20 May, 2010): “The Government of Pakistan blocked on Wednesday access to Facebook after the Lahore High Court ordered closure of the social networking website until May 31 for holding a competition of blasphemous drawings. Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry asked Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Director Mudassar Husain to file a detailed report on the matter.”

Facebook: After the court’s decision, the PTA ordered all the operators in the country to block the website, www.facebook.com, until further orders. It said the directives had been issued by the ministry of information technology and telecommunication in view of the LHC’s order. All the ISPs of Pakistan have blocked access to all the hosting servers of www.facebook.com.

BlackBerry Services: I would like to add some important information in the same context, that all the Mobile Network Operators of BlackBerry Services in Pakistan were also trying to block access to the Facebook.com but they could not do it because the Blackberry Services are routed through RIM. So, finally they have stopped BlackBerry Internet Services (GPRS) along with BlackBerry Services for devices. Now Blackberry services are totally stopped in Pakistan only voice (GSM) and text smsm services are working. Mobile Network Operators have not decided yet that how long Blackberry Services will remain closed. I think they will manage it by addition of scripting to IT Policy and Service Book entries for BES (Blackberry Enterprise Servers) & BIS (Blackberry Internet Servers) to stop all requests to the servers of Facebook.com.

YouTube: The latest notification is being publicized that www.youtube.com has also been blocked over “blasphemous” material until 31st May 2010 as directed by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). Any representation of the Prophet Hazrat Mohammad (PBUH) is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by Muslims.