Pakistan Reportedly Blocking Wikipedia

Bloomberg reported that Wikipedia has been blocked in Pakistan over “sacrilegious” content on the site.

This came after the government ordered the platform to remove offending content within 48 hours. Later on, the country’s telecom authority “degraded” its services.

Based on research from the OpenNet Initiative, Pakistan blocks sites that have content regarded as “blasphemous, anti-Islamic, or threatening to internal security.”

The country blocked several major sites in the past, including YouTube for three years.

In 2020 and 2021, it also banned TikTok due to complaints of “immoral/indecent content” being shared on the app.

Wikipedia is familiar with backlash from other nation-states. An editor for the site was recently arrested in Belarus, and Russia threatened to block the site if it didn’t change information on a page covering the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has temporarily blocked Wikipedia before, and the site has also been banned in countries such as Turkey, China, and Myanmar, with other countries blocking specific articles and content.