Islamabad High Court (IHC) has warned the federal government that the Prime Minister and federal ministers may have to face contempt of court proceedings if the court’s order about taking anti-blasphemy measures online is not implemented.
IHC Chief Justice Shaukat Aziz Sidiqqui made these remarks on Friday as the government failed to submit a compliance report in line with his judgement of March 31, ordering the government to deal with the proliferation of blasphemous content on social media.
While issuing the orders back in March this year, the honourable judge had stated that blasphemers were no less than terrorists. The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) consequently issued a public service message, asking citizens to report blasphemous content they may find online. The then interior minister Chaudhry Nisar had the similar views about the threat social media poses. He had said that the entire medium would be blocked if the social media platforms failed to take down blasphemous content. The narrative created by government at that time through FIA’s public messages and interior minister’s statements built an impression that Pakistan’s cyberspace was full of blasphemers who were misusing their right to free speech. We said earlier, and we reiterate it now, that blasphemy is in the eye of the beholder. It is not a matter for the government to obsess itself with each and every word spoken or written in the public sphere. That is how authoritarian regimes work. Democratic government need to uphold basic freedoms of their citizens, while inculcating values of tolerance and pluralism in their citizenry.
Besides, we find it strange that comparable attention is never paid by our authorities to hate speech and online activities of banned terror organisations.
This implies that state institutions consider free speech and expression to be a bigger threat than groups using social media to incite violence. With such misplaced priorities, little wonder that our fight against terrorism and extremism remains on shaky grounds.
Blasphemy law has long been misused for settling scores and targeting minority communities. Blasphemy allegations against four social media activists who were recovered days after being abducted earlier in the year indicated that the blasphemy card would now be used to clamp down on political dissent as well.
We also witnessed the brutal lynching of university student Mashal Khan in Mardan by fellow students over blasphemy allegations. It is significant to note that the incident took place just a few days after official warnings were issued against online ‘blasphemy’.
It won’t be wrong to say that all those who incited violence against social media users and encouraged the practice of taking law into one’s own hands are to be blamed for Mashal’s murder. It is unfortunate that no lessons have been learnt and the dangerous act of encouraging people to act against ‘blasphemers’ continues. *
Published in Daily Times, December 18th 2017.