 "Internat has slowed by 40% in Pakistan lately (Photo: Reuters)")
As a Pakistan court has started hearing case related to internet freedoms, a human rights watchdog has urged the government to be more transparent in its actions.
For the past one year, Pakistan has had many rounds of internet crackdowns. The social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has been banned in China for around six months and internet speed has fallen by around 40 per cent in the past two weeks.
Amid such conditions, the Islamabad High Court is hearing a petition filed by journalist Hamid Mir about the nationwide internet slowdown. The HC has issued notices to the federal government and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). Previously, the PTA had blamed a fault in the submarine cables for the slowdown and had said no firewalls were being put in place.
Now, the Amnesty International has said in a statement that the opacity in Pakistan regarding internet freedoms is an alarming concern. Calling for transparency in government decisions, the watchdog urged the Pakistani government to be “transparent about the cause of these internet disruptions and ensure that they do not deploy monitoring and surveillance systems that are unnecessary, disproportionate, and in violation of international human rights law”.
‘Pakistani govt’s actions incompatible with human rights’
The Amnesty International said that the Pakistani government has repeatedly and opaquely resorted to the monitoring and surveillance technologies that block content, slow down, and control internet speeds in the country.
“Time and again, the use of such technologies, including national firewalls, has proven to be incompatible with human rights…These pervasive tools undermine online freedom of expression and access to information,” said the watchdog.
The internet slowdown caused losses to the tune of around Rs 300 million, said PTA Chairman Retired Major General Hafeezur Rehman, as per The Dawn.
The newspaper reported that Pakistan’s business community and internet service providers (ISPs) had alleged that the government’s efforts to monitor internet traffic by putting in place a so-called ‘firewall’ had caused the slowdown that caused the losses.