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International media exaggerated the significance of the government’s blocking of Facebook and Youtube in Pakistan earlier this month, says Pakistani expert in radicalism in Pakistan. The country is changing, but the international community is failing to acknowledge this

By Lotte Dahlmann, IMS

On 20 May 2010, one of the main stories of all the major international news networks around the world was Pakistan’s crackdown on social Internet networks Facebook and Youtube.

A Pakistani court had ordered a two-week blocking of the immensely popular global social network Facebook while it investigated allegations of unislamic content put forward by a religious party. The following day, access to Youtube was also barred.

The incident led to several demonstrations in various Pakistani cities against the drawing competition and Facebook.

But unlike the demonstrations at the height of the Danish Cartoon Crisis in 2006 and the disclosure of the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib Prison in 2004, the Facebook protests in May were significantly smaller, he says:

- The demonstrations were typically orchestrated by religious groups or parties. I never counted more than a few hundred participants, and the demonstrations would only last 10-15 minutes says Amir Rana, Director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, who is currently visiting Denmark.

Mixed reactions in Pakistan

Reactions amongst Pakistani Facebook users were mixed. BBC World Service followed the story closely and conducted a poll according to which the majority criticised the ban on Facebook while also feeling offended on behalf of the Islamic prophet.

Of Pakistan’s 180 million citizens, only an estimated 20 million use the Internet primarily for social networking.

“International media exaggerated the situation”

In Pakistan, the story was mainly covered by the electronic media, which carried extensive coverage of the protests in the first two days. After that, media attention died down.

Under headlines such as: “Pakistan blocks access to YouTube in Internet crackdown” (BBC, 20 May 2010), international media launched speculations about growing censorship of the Internet as well as a whether a new Cartoon crisis was unfolding. (CNN, Fox News, Al Jazeera, Radio Australia).

According to Amir Rana, international media over-exaggerated the situation and missed out on the real story.

The fact that the reaction in the Pakistani population was mixed – and that the protests against Facebook were so limited in scale, is one of many signs that public sentiments in Pakistan have shifted in recent years, according to Amir Rana:

- First of all, people face greater challenges in their daily lives than being barred from Facebook. Secondly, religious sentiments are being pushed in the background by other, more pressing concerns these days, he says.

As a consequence, there is a growing consensus against terror and religious radicalism in Pakistan.

According to the Pakistan Security Report 2009, published by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, Taleban and other militant groups in Pakistan increasingly choose civilian targets.

- People have suffered many casualties in terror attacks and militant insurgencies in recent years, and this has lead to a significant change in public opinion, says Amir Rana.

Public sentiment changing

Just a few years back, Pakistan was characterised by an ambiguous attitude towards the “war on terror”. This changed once the government came up with a clean-cut policy on counter terrorism, he explains:

- In 2009, the government was successful with its military campaign to counter militant insurgency. Also, the past seven to eight years have seen a maturing of people, as the crisis has built a positive attitude in society.

Some years ago, 70-72 percent of the respondents in Gallop polls would approve dialogue as the preferred option on how to counter militants. This changed since the collapse in 2009 of the dialogue policy:

- In a recent poll, 51 percent of respondents now say they support a military solution. 36 percent say they are  unsure and only 13 percent are against military response, says Amir Rana. He goes on to explain:

- A lot of things have changed in the past few years. Civil society has seen a restoration of the judiciary, and in the last 2-3 months, many people have demonstrated in the streets in support of their rights – even in Islamabad, the capital. Today, people are more preoccupied with other greater concerns in life and less with religious issues.

Though a proponent of free access to sources of information, Amir Rana fears that incidents like the one concerning Facebook only fuels support for the militant groups in Pakistan. And when international media continue to hold on to an outdated perception of Pakistan, they make matters worse:

- The global community must notice and recognise the ongoing changes in Pakistan and see that we need the support of the international community to stay on the current course, says Muhammad Amir Rana.

Notes to the Editor:

Pak Institute for Peace Studies is a partner of International Media Support. Muhammad Amir Rana is in Denmark, hosted by IMS.

For more information, please contact the IMS Communications Coordinator, Lotte Dahlmann.