In the past 48 hours, the government of Pakistan has sharpened its attacks on the use of VPNs (virtual private networks) in the country by Internet users. Many people who use VPNs do so to get around bans on various websites and in particular the ban since February 2024 on the use of Twitter/X.
First, a directive was issued by the Interior Ministry to the state-run telecom and internet regulator, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), that all VPNs that have not been registered with the authority should be shut down and a deadline of November 30 was given for this. This was followed a few hours later in the day by a long statement from the chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) who tried to give a detailed explanation for his reasoning that VPNs were being used by people in Pakistan to access porn websites, and since porn was prohibited under the strictures of the faith, hence anything that assisted in gaining access to such prohibited things also had to be prohibited.
This was nothing more than those who wished for VPNs to be blocked completely in the country using the garb of religion to justify their excessive and undue control of the media – in this case social and digital media.
Those who have been around long enough to see the tenure of previous military dictators such as General Ziaul Haq, would be familiar with tactics used by them to prolong their rule and strengthen their grip on power. But the truth is that such measures, in particular those seeking a tight iron grip on the media and the flow of information more often than not backfired, because the people are not easily fooled and they saw that the measures were not taken in the larger public interest but in the sole interest of those in power and an attempt to prolong their rule.
Measures like these are going to make Pakistan a laughing stock of the entire world – on the one hand, it’s been launching a Digital Pakistan vision and on the other, it’s banned for months a popular social media app used all over the world and is now planning to ban the use of VPN
It will be difficult to say that this is not happening right now as well in Pakistan. In particular, the use of the CII is going to be seen by most Pakistanis as a desperate attempt to legitimise the planned complete ban on the use of VPNs. It is likely that even those who weren’t exactly fans of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his party would now be opposed to this action by the current government. In this context, it is instructive to see recent remarks by Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari who said that those who are behind such prohibitions don’t use the internet and don’t seem to understand the harm they will cause to Pakistan’s IT exports and its drive towards an increasingly digitalised economy.
The fact is that measures like these are going to make Pakistan a laughing stock of the entire world – on the one hand, it’s been launching a Digital Pakistan vision and on the other, it’s banned for months a popular social media app used all over the world and is now planning to ban the use of VPNs. Furthermore, at a speech to a thinktank in Islamabad on November 15, the army chief said that while technology had greatly enabled the dissemination of information, it also had led to the dissemination of fake news and misleading information, and these needed to be checked through “comprehensive rules and regulations”. While that statement is partly true, outright bans tend to be counterproductive and end up unifying and swaying public opinion against the state. There are other ways to keep the flow of misinformation and fake news in check and this can be done by taking the media on board, rather than treating it as a hostile instrument of enemies of the state.
Furthermore, the message that all this sends to the rest of the world is that Pakistan is a country that is taking measures that will push its internet and digital economy two to three decades back rather than move it forward.
Pakistan’s economy is at a stage where it needs to diversify its exports from the traditional textiles base – and IT exports and words done by freelancers in the digital economy are a good alternative. In fact, Pakistan’s IT exports for 2023-24 for the first time crossed $3 billion and totaled $3.2 billion. However, these recent actions risk wiping all these gains and for that reason alone they need to be reconsidered.
Those who make such decisions in Pakistan need to decide whether they want the economy to grow and with it the incomes and the quality of life of its citizens, or tell the outside world that it is not serious about developing its digital economy as a driver of economic growth.