Blog Censorship

On the BBC website, dated July 19, 2006:

“ India's burgeoning blogging community is up in arms against a government directive that they say has led to the blocking of their web logs. The government is not saying why it has banned each of the sites in its latest notification. This has incensed bloggers in India, which has about 40,000 blog sites and a number of them have started filing petitions under the country's new landmark freedom of information law.”

Well the same thing has happened in Pakistan. The only differences are that there was no announcement and nobody is foolish enough to complain. While I am still able to access my blog site to add new stories I am not able to view my site or anyone else’s. However, the rest of the world apparently can still keep tabs on my activities.

In a way, it’s kind of cool to think that I’m being censored. The IT officer at work jokingly suggested that I should lead a public protest. To shake him up a bit I told him that my sign would say “Pervez Objects to Blog Ban.” Of course, if government officials had actually looked at my site they would probably still maintain that it should be banned. Not because it’s a risk to state security, but because they would think they were doing my readers a favour.