PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court on Wednesday directed Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to remove all ‘blasphemous and objectionable’ material from TikTok, a popular video-sharing application.

A bench consisting of Justice Syed Mohammad Attique Shah and Justice Shakil Ahmad directed the authority to submit a progress report within seven days about removal of the said material from TikTok.

The bench issued the order over a petition, requesting for complete ban on TikTok, saying it failed to stop uploading of ‘blasphemous and indecent’ material on it.

It fixed July 24 for next hearing of the plea filed by a lawyer Imran Khan, requesting the court to direct the respondents including the PTA, Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and ministry of information to permanently ban TikTok in Pakistan on the continued, recurring and consistent breach of community guidelines, which violated the Constitution of Pakistan, provisions of Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), Rule 3 of Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Contents Rules, 2021, and provisions of Pakistan Penal Code.

Court directs the authority to submit progress report within seven days

He also prayed the court to direct the respondents not to allow such applications in future that affected moral and ethical values of Pakistani people. The petitioner also sought interim relief, requesting the court to order removal of all illegal contents from TikTok till final disposal of his plea.

Barrister Babar Shahzad Imran appeared for the petitioner whereas PTA was represented by Advocate Jehanzeb Mehsud.

Mr Mehsud informed the bench that he had submitted comments on behalf of PTA, whereas Barrister Babar said that he had so far not received a copy of the comments.

Barrister Babar stated that there were benefits of social media but some social media platforms had opened the way to express anything disregarding decency, morality and the glory of Islam in countries like Pakistan.

He said that the TikTok application, launched by a Chinese company, was a social media platform that allowed users to create, share and discover short-form videos. He stated that as per current statistics, there were almost 54.4 million Pakistani users on TikTok making it 7th amongst the top seven user countries.

Justice Shakil observed ‘this is an extremely important matter. People should be allowed to share positive material, but there should not be objectionable contents on such platforms.’

Mr Mehsud contended that hundreds of thousands of videos had been shared on TikTok on daily basis.

He added that PTA promptly blocked any video sharing blasphemous content.

Justice Attique Shah pointed out that in the USA and other countries proper filtering systems were in place. “Why such like filtering systems have not been introduced in Pakistan for blocking objectionable contents,” the judge questioned.

The bench also wondered about possibility of creating a firewall for automatically blocking blasphemous contents on social media platforms.

The PTA’s counsel said that presently they didn’t have such a system of creating firewalls.

Referring to different past judgements of the superior courts and action taken by the government, Barrister Babar stated that in March 2021 the application was banned by PTA on the order of PHC.

He said that after promises and commitments made by the company, it was allowed to function but it overlooked the necessary measures to curb the actions that violated the laws of Pakistan.

The counsel claimed that TikTok had become a leading actor in disregarding community guidelines as directed and regulated by Pakistan and that factor had been observed and held by PTA and courts of Pakistan from time-to-time.

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2024