Naya Pakistan, Naya Threats - Twitter faces shutdown threat over 'blasphemy' concerns. So much for modern Mr Imran Khan
The Daily Show’s host Trevor Noah, in a recent episode of the Comedy Central show, compared the newly elected Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to US President Donald Trump, citing a few telltale similarities — an extremely privileged upbringing, “zero experience in politics”, the harbinger of a “New Pakistan”, orthodoxy, political rhetoric and hyper-nationalism. Oh, and of course, three marriages.
Without getting into Noah’s possibly reductionist comparison and his showmanship that sometimes borders on the offensive, there is one glaring inconsistency when it comes to these two leaders — Khan, unlike Trump, is not a social media person.
While the US president, who vilifies the liberal media on an hourly basis, does all his communication on his Twitter account, often in loud and audacious tweets, Imran Khan uses it more as just another way to notify his supporters and followers of new updates. Trump and Twitter are inseparable. But that is not so with Khan, and a new report is more than telling of that.
According to news reports from Pakistan, on August 15, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) informed the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat that while Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms complied with requests from the government to block objectionable content, Twitter did not.
Dawn quoted Nisar Ahmed, the director general of PTA’s Internet Policy and Web Analysis, telling the committee: “Out of a hundred requests from Pakistan to block certain offensive material, roughly five per cent are entertained. Twitter ignores all the remaining requests,” adding that the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had directed the regulatory body to serve Twitter with a final notice, informing them of the impending risk of being blocked in Pakistan, should they not comply.
This threat is not an empty one.
Pakistan has in the past blocked websites for similar reasons. Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc., have all found themselves banned in Pakistan at one point or the other because of “objectionable content”.
Which brings us to an interesting point — an age-old regressive precedent, one based on censorship, flies right in the face of Khan’s promise of a “Naya Pakistan”. Or, is the new, like fashion trends that go retro, just a step back into the old?
According to the Dawn report, however, Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s information sectary Fawad Chaudhry said that the party line was one against censorship: “Those who do not wish to see objectionable and offensive content should not search for such content. Social media is not just for recreation and entertainment. There are jobs and households associated with the business. Blocking social media websites will have both social and economic impacts.”
But there is more than meets the eye. The PTI may say that it is anti-censorship — but its election campaigning, however, has been one of conservative values. Khan himself, once touted as a “playboy” on the tabloids, now toes an extremely conservative line, visible especially from photos of his latest wedding.
Then again, it may as well be not up to Khan at all.
After all, political pundits and foreign policy experts have, for a while, maintained that any Pakistani leader — elected or not — is just a front for the military. Khan may as well be conservative in the streets, and liberal in the sheets, but it doesn’t matter.
The State (deep) gets what the State wants.