Saturday, May 31, 2003
Saturday, May 31, 2003 |
| International | ||||
|
News:
Front Page |
National |
Southern States |
Other States |
International |
Opinion |
Business |
Sport |
Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary | International
By B. Muralidhar Reddy
The site, run by a former editor of a leading Pakistani daily from the United States, has been highly critical of the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf. A few months ago, the Pakistan Government had put out an advertisement warning all concerned not to use the material appearing in South Asia Tribune on the ground that it was carrying on a systematic campaign against the interests of Pakistan. The site was available till Thursday. In a statement, the Editor of the web site, Shaheen Sehbai, claimed that PTCL's Pakistan Internet Exchange (PIE), which provided full circuit international Internet bandwidth to customers all over Pakistan, blocked the site. ``Only those few ISPs who are not served by PTCL's PIE can still provide access to the site but they have also been told by the top officials to block it immediately.Thus almost all the ISPs in the country have been affected, thereby effectively cutting out access to the site throughout Pakistan,'' he claimed. ``This is a blatant attack on the freedom of the press as recently the South Asia Tribune had done a number of stories which exposed the Government policies,'' Editor of the South Asia Tribune, Shaheen Sehbai, said, condemning the Government move in a statement from Washington DC. He alleged that it was a simple case of a military government getting so unnerved by objective and honest reporting that they had decided to deny the Pakistani people their right to information and truth. He urged all democracy and freedom-loving forces to condemn the ban and pressure the Musharraf Government to remove it immediately. He alleged that last year besides harassing his family members, the Government in November published an advertisement in all Pakistani newspapers asking people not to visit the South Asia Tribune web site and warned Pakistani media not to reprint stories published there. ``This is the second direct attack to silence the voice of freedom and professionalism, which exposes all claims of the Government allowing freedom of expression, access to international media and Internet''. The website was launched in July 2002 and in 10 months it claimed to have registered more than 11 million hits. The latest major story was about the Centcom Data on Pakistan's support to the U.S. in the Afghan war.
Within hours of the publication of the story on the website, Centcom pulled out the entire data from its website, while leading international media picked it up and a major political controversy is already raging in Pakistan.
Printer friendly
page
News:
Front Page |
National |
Southern States |
Other States |
International |
Opinion |
Business |
Sport |
Miscellaneous |
|
|
|
The Hindu Group: Home | About Us | Copyright | Archives | Contacts | Subscription Group Sites: The Hindu | Business Line | The Sportstar | Frontline | The Hindu eBooks | Home |
Copyright © 2003, The
Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of
this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of
The Hindu
|
