Is Facebook working with Pakistan to block ‘blasphemous’ content?

Pakistan claims Facebook has agreed to block content the country deems “blasphemous,” a crackdown on free speech and religious liberty the social media giant has not denied.

In mid-March, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said offending content should be removed from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and told his administration to reach out to the companies, Reuters reported. Pakistan’s telecommunications regulator already blocks many dissident websites and material it considers blasphemous to Islam, according to Al Jazeera.

“Effective steps must be taken immediately to remove and block such content,” Sharif said in a statement responding to an ongoing court case against blasphemy on Facebook. He also said he wanted offenders “strictly punished.” Blasphemy is a crime in Pakistan and can even carry the death penalty.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told reporters last week that Facebook’s vice president assured him in a letter the company took the Pakistani government’s concerns “very seriously.” Khan said a Facebook delegation planned to visit that week to discuss the issue. He also noted the social network used by 25-30 million people in Pakistan already blocked 62 “offensive” pages in recent months, according to Reuters.

Facebook would not comment on Khan’s claims but pointed to its global “Community Standards” and “Government Requests Report” for insight.

“When governments believe that something on the internet violates their laws, they may contact companies like Facebook and ask us to restrict access to that content,” the report states. “When we receive such a request, it is scrutinized to determine if the specified content does indeed violate local laws. If we determine that it does, then we make it unavailable in the relevant country or territory.”

At the beginning of March, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) ordered Pakistan’s government to charge people behind multiple Facebook pages the court deemed blasphemous, according to Pakistan’s Express Tribune. Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui claimed extremist liberals and secularists are a greater threat to Pakistan than religious fundamentalists.

But religious minorities in Pakistan dispute that assessment: People often target them under blasphemy laws. Anyone accused of blasphemy also faces the threat of mob violence.

“There is overwhelming evidence that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws violate human rights and encourage people to take the law into their own hands,” Audrey Gaughran, Amnesty International’s director of global issues, said in 2016. “Once a person is accused, they become ensnared in a system that offers them few protections, presumes them guilty, and fails to safeguard them against people willing to use violence.”

In February, Pakistani police jailed a Christian teen after a Muslim friend accused him of sharing and “liking” an allegedly blasphemous image of the Kaaba, an Islamic holy site in Mecca. The boy’s attorney told Morning Star News the case was “fabricated.”

Last year, Pakistan allowed YouTube back into the country after negotiating a localized and censored version, Al Jazeera reported. This latest social media crackdown comes just months after the prime minister claimed the country would soon be known as “minorities friendly.”

Secular atheist group Center for Inquiry released a statement urging Facebook to stand up to Pakistan’s “aggressive attempts to police online speech critical of religion.”