By Afiya Shehrbano Zia
First published in Economic and Political Weekly, Aug. 23, 2014
A comic and irreverent rap music video, Kholo BC (by Adil Omar and Ali Gul Pir), has gone viral on the alternative site Vimeo, and is part of a youth initiative Pakistan for All1 against internet censorship in Pakistan. One of its co-founders Mohammad Jibran Nasir is a young and freethinking independent candidate from Karachi who contested in the national elections in 2013. The song’s success lies in the homonym of its title, Kholo Ban Chor (“open the ban, you thief”, but when said or sung out, “Ban Chor” sounds like the common colloquial abuse “BC”, the often-cited and more “polite” and euphemistic initialism).
In any case, even though YouTube has been banned, most users access its content through proxies. Accordingly, the protest campaign reports that this video has reached 6,47,521 people on Facebook so far, with over 1,25,000 active clicks – 14,000 hits on Vimeo and 5,000 on YouTube – making it the most viral video in Pakistan in the first week of March 2014 (Millard 2014).
However, despite their admirable spunk, the claim of these protestors that the ban is a case of state censorship may be an unfair accusation. It is tempting to argue that Pakistan’s absurd and futile but frustrating ban on YouTube in the age of WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden is a case of old-world and conspiratorial state censorship. Instead, the reason may be far simpler and could be explained by way of lay incompetence and a spiritual false consciousness on the part of two successive governments.
Ban Everything and Then Some
The incompetence explanation is fairly self-evident. The Pakistani state likes to confer bans in knee-jerk reaction to any source of discomfort, be it a terrorist group, blasphemous material or subversive art, with no intention of observing the interdicts that go with it, and with full but disinterested knowledge that such bans afford no practical value. The more obvious example has been the historical ban of religious and militant outfits.
Currently, Pakistan has officially banned some 50-60 religious outfits, and it has become so banal that sometimes newspapers have a hard time keeping up and have had to apologise and retract the publication of wrongly named groups on lists that are regularly revised and released by the government.
More relevant is the glaring, almost mocking violations by some jihadist organisations, such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which responds to its “ban” by simply reorganising its leadership under a different register – in this case, the charitable front of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) – which allows it to technically distance itself from the banned mother organisation of the LeT. Such groups also offer franchises, which allow them to branch out and also to accommodate their senior officials by giving them executive roles under the new operative set-up, rather than giving them cause to set up competing “companies”. Others include the Jaish-e-Mohammed (now Tehreek-ul- Furqan), Sipah-e-Sahaba (now Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (now Jamiat-ul-Ansar), and so on.
Some may argue, under an old framework of analysis, that the Pakistani state is invested in patronising jihadist outfits for its policy of deploying proxy militias towards maintaining what is loosely called “strategic depth” in neighbouring countries. Therefore, the policy of banning is simply an appeasement strategy in response to international pressure.
Regardless of the military establishment’s machinations, overstated or not, it is highly plausible that in the case of the ban on YouTube, this has just not been retracted because the government has shot itself in the foot and does not know how to undo this. The young Information Technology Minister, Anusha Rahman from the conservative Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Party, has twice declined to turn up at court hearings where a non-governmental organisation, Bytes for All, has registered a petition against the government’s ban. The government’s position at the judicial hearings has been that they lack the technology to filter certain material, and this has resulted in the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority blocking off the entire YouTube site, rather than just one source. Until such expensive filters can be obtained and set up, the government suggests that it is helpless in lifting the ban.
It is not just technicality and misplaced bureaucratic stubbornness that sustains the two-year ban. The moral cover is an important shield for expedient policy decisions in Pakistan. In the case of the YouTube ban, this is prompted by the self-appointed mantle under which Pakistan seems to imagine itself as the guardian and protector of the larger moral cause of the global Muslim ummah. This imaginary takes on special significance due to Pakistan’s pre-eminent status as a nuclear Islamic nation. Therefore, Pakistan often assumes the devout responsibility for any moral injury inflicted on any/all Muslims, everywhere. From the Salman Rushdie affair, to the blasphemous cartoons of Denmark, to the trailer of an amateur “blasphemous film” on YouTube, Pakistanis take the lead amongst all Muslim countries in wreaking the most reactionary violence to punish and kill its own people, for an insult that may have been manufactured in another part of the world by some non-Pakistani. All this is done to avenge the moral injury on behalf of all Muslims over the insult of the Prophet of Islam, and to prove their love for him.
‘Google Should Ban Pakistan’
In response to news about a trailer on YouTube advertising a blasphemous film on Islam in 2012, the “liberal” government of the time, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), declared an immediate ban of the host site and a holiday to mark the love of the Prophet. Ostensibly, this was done in order to pre-empt the accusation from Islamists that it was not doing enough to demonstrate its outrage against the film. The irony of The Innocence of Muslims cannot be lost on any Pakistani when we consider that on this “Day of Love” in September 2012, some 23 Pakistanis were killed in chaotic mob protests, six cinemas were torched, public properties were burnt and broken, and a cabinet minister of the government announced a $100,000 bounty for anyone who could murder the film-maker (later reprimanded by the then prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani) (Anjum 2012; The News International 2012).
In the first year of the YouTube ban, there were rumours that Google itself was about to be banned since the film was not being removed by the host site. One young web editor of an English language newspaper, Jahanzaib Haque (2013), appealed to the global imperatives behind the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and argued that the ban was a human rights violation. He observed that
our Constitution is flawed and utterly inadequate when it comes to discussing the web; our media men and judiciary are, by and large,too old, unaware of our Constitution is and/or outright alienated from the online space to truly understand the issue. Instead, … Google … should listen to the plea of ordinary citizens of Pakistan who are its customers, take a principled stand and refuse to negotiate with the government until it stops trampling over the rights of its citizens. Or … Google should ban Pakistan.
This sentiment should have worried many Pakistani post-9/11 scholars and nationalists who complain that this kind of commentary that deploys “human rights” arguments by local activists invites imperialist intervention, or is an example of sold-out, westernised liberal fascism that is destroying Pakistan. But, since such protest was not about freedoms for women, minorities, or about sexualities, it went unnoticed.
Unlike the hate and suspicions directed towards “anti-Pakistan” Malala when she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, no one noticed or objected when Internet freedoms campaigner Shahzad Ahmad of Bytes for All won the UK-based Doughty Street Advocacy award in 2013 for his activism against Pakistan’s state censorship of cyber freedoms.
The Cyber Generation Gap
Pakistan’s cyber generation gap dates itself to the Lawyers’ Movement of 2007-09 when a younger group of neophyte activists (who I call General Musharraf’s children) joined General Zia’s and even General Ayub’s children in the protest movement against the emergency imposed by Musharraf in 2007. Under the leadership of renowned lawyer and PPP parliamentarian, Aitzaz Ahsan, and responding to his call for the restoration of the deposed chief justice and for the rule of law, several generations came together.
As part of their demand for the restoration of the constitution and civilian democracy, younger debutante activists invoked cyber activism, circulated mobile phone movies of protests across the country within minutes, set up web server lists of citizens’ protest groups all over Pakistan, and flooded Facebook with information for global viewing. This not only stumped the older generation but also grabbed media attention and put on the national agenda people’s concerns about democratic and institutional separation of powers beyond the preoccupation over security concerns and the religious militancy that was at its peak in the tribal agencies at the time.
Given that many from a younger generation rely heavily on cyber politics and social media as the channel for raising awareness, engaging in polemics, and even lobbying on issues, their frustration over the ban of any internet site is understandable. But, it is the underlying principle that they claim as their cause that is more problematic.
The accusation that the YouTube ban is anti-democratic and against the freedoms of expression evokes older, unresolved debates. Basing the rationale for lifting the ban on expected “freedoms” is reflective of a broader dichotomous debate that has caught the imagination of Pakistanis over the last decade. Universal rights vs cultural-specific rights, constitution vs Sharia, lay colonial laws vs Islamic laws, human rights vs Muslim rights, liberal-secularism vs religious fundamentalism, drone warfare vs Taliban pogroms, patriots vs native-informers, freedom of expression vs hate speech, elite secularists vs proletariat Islamists, and liberal-phobia vs Islamophobia are just some of the catchphrases thrown around in this identarian struggle that find expression in many of the debates, usually fought out in the electronic, print and virtual media.
Whose Speech, Which Freedom?
There are two problems with the principle that informs the campaigners’ demand for lifting the ban. First, in judging what constitutes as hate or free speech, whose moral injury is more defendable? Second, does YouTube really contribute towards expanding democratic political expression in the first place, and does its ban shrink such freedoms?
Most rights-based activists have given up on street activism under the realisation that they cannot compete with the geographical outreach of the Islamists. Many liberals, therefore, have found refuge in a virtual substitute by way of cyber activism. However, in recent years, these activists have made the rude discovery that Facebook and social media are not quite the vanguard of progressive communication, but, instead, have been captured equally by the rearguard and conservatives.
So, when thousands applauded, on Facebook, the murder of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer (2011) for his perceived criticism of the blasphemy laws, the liberals welcomed the removal of such pages from the site as objectionable and hate-inciting expressions. But, how does this compare when in May 2010, Facebook refused to remove the pages of an alleged drawing competition of the Prophet of Islam that was considered incitement to commit blasphemy? It was only due to the pressure by religious lobbies that the Government of Pakistan shut Facebook down for some weeks, only to be allowed to run again after a Lahore court adjudicated on the matter. This opens up the unresolved debate of when freedom of expression may be considered injurious – when it offends the moral sensibilities of liberals, or those of the conservatives too?
The fact is that this generation depends on and favours visual and virtual media (preferably brief), rather than written and physical sources of information. The impact of this in terms of political consciousness remains to be seen, but in terms of Pakistani rights-based activism, this trend seems to be veering towards a privatisation of political consciousness, rather than public engagement and street activism.
Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter are increasingly amplifying the views of even armchair activists. Even bloggers are being elevated to the stature of public intellectuals. Social media tools now enable self-promotion by besieged Pakistani politicians too, who, for security reasons, find it impossible to mix with the masses as they used to in the pre-Taliban days. The 25-year-old co-chair of the PPP, a position he inherited from his late mother Benazir Bhutto, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari conducts much of his political campaigns on and through Twitter and by posting selfies with controlled groups, rather than in real time or in the public sphere.
So, due to the ban of YouTube, no particular group or political party is being censured by the state, nor is there any media policy that is specifically designed to deny the opposition or people their right to express their political views. Who is the “YOU” that is suffering this supposed state censorship then?
Graduating from Virtual Politics
Globally, YouTube, in terms of content and viewership, is dominated by music and entertainment. So, when one of the “Kholo Ban Chor” singers, Ali Gul Pir tweets that, “You cant keep the people of Pakistan in the dark!YouTube ban is political!So the masses dont have a uncensored medium of expression #KholoBC”,2 he is not quite accurate.
At this point, YouTube in Pakistan is really more of a passive cultural tool – one which may offer an avenue for local talent to be viewed, uploaded, and showcased, but predominantly for musical or may be even faith-based performativity, rather than any academic or intellectually subversive content. This is not to suggest that the available content cannot be politically relevant or that it is not a space where a counterculture may develop. It is just that, currently, there is no evidence of its dangerous critical mass potential, Arab Spring-like, that would compel the Pakistani state to censure the entire site by design.
To the extent that the YouTube ban was imposed to “heal” the moral injury that Pakistanis tend to suffer, just by the thought that there is blasphemous material out there somewhere, the ban can arguably be seen as a policy of state “protection” of majoritarian sentiment rather than censure. Now, if activists and freedom campaigners want to really talk politics and the role of the state on the root issue behind the ban, it would mean discussing what constitutes blasphemy, the laws that govern this crime in Pakistan, and its political deployment and murderous consequences.
Getting YouTube up and running is not going to restore political freedoms beyond the right to a certain segment and a certain kind of information. If campaigners are serious about the broader project of freedom towards uncensored expression and political liberties, then the imperatives behind the compulsive ban policies need to be visited.
For that, activists would need to climb out of virtual space and reclaim the ceded political space that has insidiously and effectively reduced even the possibility of discussing reforms or improvement of flawed laws and policies that allow silencing, vigilantism, violence and murder in the name of religion in Pakistan today. This ban on reformative thought is what should be addressed urgently and should take to task those “ban chors” who are obstructing basic and secular freedoms, and expressions of life, liberty and political expression for Pakistanis today.
Notes
1 “Pakistan for All | Facebook”, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pakistan-for-All/3062375 09513944
2 “Twitter / Aligulpir: You cant keep the people of …”, 23 February 2014, https://twitter.com/Aligulpir/status/437577304303099904
References
Anjum, Shakeel (2012): “Islamabad Becomes War Zone as Protests Turn Violent”, The News International, 21 September, http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-13-17601-Islamabad-becomes-war-zon…
Haque, Jahanzaib (2013): “Google Should Ban Pakistan”, The Express Tribune,13 June, http://tribune.com.pk/story/562507/google-should-ban-pakistan/
Millard, Drew (2014): “Pakistani Rapper Adil Omar Is Fighting Against His Home Country’s Ban on Youtube”, Noisey, 24 March, http://noisey.vice.com/blog/adil-omar-kholo-bc-interview
The News International (2012): “Violent Protests Continue in Twin Cities”, The News International, 21 September, http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-68603-Violent-protests-continue-in-twi…
