LAHORE: As disruption of social media platform X stretched into its fifth week, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said on Tuesday the country needed “better laws” to regulate internet free speech.
“We need to make better laws,” he said when asked whether his ministry was responsible for shutting down the platform, formerly known as Twitter.
“Expression is fine, but making false allegations against people is wrong — it’s happening and needs to be fixed,” he told reporters. “We must reassess our own laws and look into what is being misused.”
Apparently, to consolidate his government’s stiff stance on social media, the interior minister cited the United States as an example, saying that even that country did not tolerate such content.
“Even in a country like the US, the ban has been imposed on TikTok after such (negative criticism) things. We also need to review our laws to regulate social media,” he said, noting that smear campaigns were being run on social media against the judiciary and armed forces, and the misuse of social media would have to be checked.
However, Mr Naqvi evaded a question when asked that top government functionaries, including Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz, were issuing statements on their X accounts by using means like virtual private networks (VPNs).
The interior minister also got annoyed when a journalist asked him that in the money laundering case against President Asif Zardari, he was also summoned by NAB in the past. “This isn’t true,” he said and told the journalist not to ask “wrong questions”.
Access to X has been disrupted in many areas of Pakistan since Feb 17, when former Rawalpindi commissioner Liaquat Chattha accused the chief election commissioner and the chief justice of Pakistan of rigging the Feb 8 general elections.
On Monday, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar reversed his earlier claim that “X is still working and no ban imposed” and insisted that the platform was already banned when the current government took over the reins from the caretaker setup. He added that there was no official notification of the clampdown.
