In a significant development,  micro blogging website Twitter blocked some blasphemous tweets in Pakistan on the request of country’s officials.

Islamabad, May 23/Nationalturk – The micro blogging website Twitter has blocked some blasphemous tweets in Pakistan on the request of country’s officials.

“Twitter has honoured five requests by officials of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block tweets that were regarded as blasphemous,” said a news report published in influential US newspaper, The New York Times.

It said the requests were made in the May by  PTA’s Abdul Batin, who had asked Twitter to censor accounts, tweets or searches on the social network that he described as blasphemous or unethical.

Twitter honoured all five requests

The newspaper said Twitter honoured all the requests which called for the blocking of content from drawings of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), photographs of burning copies of the Holy Quran and messages from a handful of anti-Islam bloggers as well as an American porn star who now attends Duke University.

It said the  blocking of these tweets in Pakistan is in line with Twitter’s country-specific censorship policy that it made public in 2012.

The newspaper said  it was the first time that the social networking site had agreed to block content.

In May 2012, Twitter was briefly blocked in Pakistan over blasphemous posts about a Facebook competition involving caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

Celebrities, cricketers, cabinet ministers and members of parliament use Twitter in Pakistan.

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Asia News / NationalTurk Pakistan News