The well-known free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has requested Pakistan to allow access to its service once again following a suspension on Wikipedia by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) for failing to remove “sacrilegious content, the platform claimed that it has no control over what is placed on its site.
In a post on Twitter, Wikimedia Foundation, the charity that runs Wikipedia, confirmed the suspension, saying that other Wikimedia projects in the country were also banned.
The organization urged Pakistan to “immediately restore access to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in the country.”
According to the report, the English Wikipedia in Pakistan obtains more than 50 million monthly visitors, followed by the Russian and Urdu Wikipedias.
In Pakistan, there is a big and active community of editors who provide historical and educational content.
A block of Wikipedia in Pakistan denies the fifth most populous nation in the world access to the largest free knowledge repository. If it continues, it will also deprive everyone access to Pakistan’s knowledge, history, and culture,” it said.
The foundation further said that it hopes that the Pakistan government restores access to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects promptly, “so that the people of Pakistan can continue to receive and share knowledge with the world”.
Earlier this week, the PTA degraded Wikipedia services in the country “on account of not blocking/removing sacrilegious content”, without specifying what the content was.
The authority stated that Wikipedia was approached for blocking the content by issuing a notice under applicable law and court order(s).
An opportunity of hearing was also provided, it said, but the platform neither took down the content nor appeared before the Authority.
