Facebook allegedly removes 85 percent of 'blasphemous' content to comply with Pakistan's request

Pakistan's Interior Ministry has stated that Facebook has complied with the government's request to remove blasphemous content on its website.

Interior Secretary Arif Khan told the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday that Facebook has already removed 85 percent of the blasphemous content, and only 15 percent of such material remains on the website, The Express Tribune reported.

Earlier this month, the Pakistani government contacted Facebook to warn the company about the repercussions if it did not comply with their demand. The officials claimed that the social networking company has sent a delegation to Pakistan to address the government's concerns about "blasphemous and objectionable" content on the site.

The IHC ordered on Monday that the top officials of the country must be involved in the issue of raising a national "firewall" to enable the government to monitor the internet traffic and all the users in Pakistan.

Khan told the court that the issue of a national firewall would be discussed with the higher ups, but he maintained that banning the social networking website is not the solution to the problem.

A director of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) told the court that three suspects have been arrested for their alleged involvement in publishing blasphemous content on social media in the past few days. He said that mobile phones, laptops and computers seized from the suspects have been sent for forensic examination.

Syed Ismael, the chairman of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), told the high court that there is a 25-member team dedicated to searching blasphemous content online. He noted that the team has already removed 40 pages containing such material.

Ismael said that Facebook initially would not consider blasphemous material as a violation, but it has now complied with requests to remove such reported pages.

"Facebook's agreement with our demands is a big achievement. They have assured to comply with our demand," said Ismael.

Facebook has not confirmed nor denied the content removals. According to Russia Today, the social media company publishes the requests it receives from governments every six months. The latest data on the website goes up to June 2016. It said that it scrutinizes the government requests to determine if a specified content breaks any local laws.

"If we determine that it does, then we make it unavailable in the relevant country or territory. For example, Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany so if it is reported to us we will restrict this content for people in Germany," the company stated on its web page about the requests.