Pakistan court orders Facebook access restored

A Pakistani court yesterday ordered authorities to restore access to Facebook, nearly two weeks after closing the site in a row over blasphemy, but hundreds of web links remain restricted.

A contest organised by an anonymous Facebook user calling on people to draw the Prophet Mohammed to promote "freedom of expression" sparked a major blacklash in the conservative Muslim country of 170 million.

Islam strictly prohibits the depiction of any prophet as blasphemous and even moderate Muslims were deeply offended by the drawings that appeared on a Facebook page in response to the call for an Everyone Draw Mohammed Day.

A group of Islamic lawyers on May 19 petitioned a court in the city of Lahore, which ordered Facebook blocked until yesterday.

The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority then banned popular video sharing website YouTube for a week and restricted access to other websites, including Wikipedia, lashing out against "growing sacrilegious" content.

But Justice Ejaz Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court yesterday issued orders that access to Facebook should be restored, asking the government to develop a system to block access to "blasphemous" content online, as in Saudi Arabia.

"Restore Facebook. We don't want to block access to information," Mr Chaudhry told the court.

"It is the government's job to take care of such things, which spark resentment among the people and bring them on to the streets. They should take steps to block any blasphemous content on the internet," he remarked.

The court adjourned until June 15 the petitions from the Islamic lawyers.

Mudassir Hussain, an official from the information technology ministry, told the court that all links to "blasphemous" content on the internet would remain blocked in Pakistan.

Facebook was still inaccessible in the country several hours after the court order and a spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan told AFP they were still awaiting the written orders.