Tariq Saeed Peshawar
The Peshawar High Court has directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to ensure in letter and spirit the removal of all blasphemous and objectionable material from the TikTok. The PHC issued the instructions Wednesday in response to a petition requesting the Court to permanently ban the social media short-video sharing platform.
A bench comprising Justice SM Atiq Shah and Justice Shakeel Ahmed presided over the critical hearing of the petition seeking to ban TikTok in Pakistan. The petition filed by Advocate Imran Khan requested the court to direct the respondents PTA, Federal Investigation Agency, and Ministry of Information to ban TikTok in Pakistan permanently for persistent breach of guidelines and violation of the Constitution. The court addressed concerns over the platform’s content, specifically focusing on blasphemous and objectionable videos.
The petitioner’s lawyer said they had in their petition appealed to the court that TikTok be banned, arguing, “While we do not oppose the sharing of positive content, the platform is also being used to share blasphemous material.”
Justice Attique supported this view, asserting, “Positive content should be shared, but there should be no place for objectionable material.” During the hearing, PTA’s lawyer informed the court that any blasphemous posts on TikTok were promptly blocked.
To this Justice Shah questioned the effectiveness of these measures, pointing out “why such content didn’t get filtered in Pakistan like in the US and other countries, where they have better filtering systems in place.”
