DHAKA Bangladesh has blocked social networking website Facebook over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed and “obnoxious” images of the Muslim-majority countrys leaders, an official said Sunday.
The move came after Pakistan banned access to Facebook, video website YouTube and 1,200 web pages over a row about “blasphemous” content on the Internet.
Facebook was blocked in Bangladesh late Saturday, the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission said.
The move was ordered as cartoons of Mohammad on the popular website “hurt the religious sentiments of the countrys Muslim population”, BTRC acting chairman Hasan Mahmud Delwar told AFP.
“Some links in the site also contained obnoxious images of our leaders including the father of the nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and the leader of the opposition,” he said.
He said Facebook would be re-opened once Bangladesh had permanently blocked the offending pages.
The countrys anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) said it had arrested one man over the images of political leaders.
“A special intelligence team arrested him and he has been charged with spreading malice,” senior RAB official Enamul Kabir said.
Kabir said the arrested man used at least six Facebook accounts to post the images but officials declined to give details of the depictions, which were not immediately showing up on the site Sunday.
On Friday thousands of Bangladeshis took to the streets of the capital Dhaka, demanding that the government ban Facebook over what they called “anti-Islamic propaganda”.
The protests were triggered by a “Everybody Draw Mohammad Day” campaign on Facebook, which its anonymous promoters said was in defence of freedom of expression.
Muslims regard all depictions of Islams founding prophet as blasphemous.
“Drawing caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad is an attack on Islam and is extremely humiliating for Islam,” Dhaka protest organiser A.T.M. Hemayet Uddin told thousands of cheering supporters.
In a counter-demonstration, Dhaka University students held a rally on the campus late Saturday, urging authorities to lift the Facebook block immediately, according to the Daily Star newspaper.
Pakistan has restored access to YouTube, but Facebook and 1,200 web pages remain blocked.
Last year Bangladesh also blocked YouTube for several days after the video site hosted a recording of an angry dispute between Prime Minister Hasina and army officers over a deadly military mutiny.
Bangladesh has nearly one million Facebook account holders -- a sixth of all Internet users, according to the BTRC. Hasina and opposition leader Khaleda Zia have fan pages on Facebook.
The site has previously attracted government ire over allegations it spreads pornography and fraudulent money-making schemes.
“There have been growing cyber-crimes related to Facebook and other social networking sites. The laws are inadequate to fight these crimes,” RAB spokesman Mohammad Sohail said.
In March, officers arrested a Dhaka-based stocks tipster with more than 10,000 Facebook followers on charges of manipulating Bangladeshs stock exchange.— AFP
