Pakistan has blocked 800 web pages and URLs to limit access to "blasphemous" material, extending a crackdown that has already banned access to Facebook and YouTube, an official said yesterday. The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) banned access to Facebook, YouTube and other links, which included restricted access to Wikipedia, in view of what it called "growing sacrilegious content" this week. "At least 800 individual web pages and URLs have been blocked since the government's orders to shut Facebook and YouTube," Wahaj us Siraj, a spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan said. Mr Siraj's remarks came hours after the Facebook user who organised an "Everyone Draw Mohammed Day" competition to promote "freedom of expression" evidently took down the page along with a separate blog about the campaign. The competition sparked angry protests in Pakistan, a conservative Muslim country, although members of a well-educated, moderate elite expressed disappointment about the blanket ban on the wildly popular websites.
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