Skip to main content

Internet Disruptions Hit Imran Khan Party Broadcast, 2nd Time In 2 Weeks

Pakistan's social media and internet services were severely throttled Saturday night, as the party of jailed ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan held a "virtual rally" ahead of elections in under three weeks.

The outage of Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube is the second in two weeks coinciding with online campaign events organised by Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.

Elections scheduled for February 8 have been marred by allegations of pre-poll rigging, with analysts saying the military establishment -- Pakistan's political kingmakers -- are squeezing Imran Khan and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf out of the race.

The event was due to broadcast Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf speeches by livestream but internet disruptions began in the early evening, before it began.

"We can confirm the nation-scale restriction of social media platforms across Pakistan," said Alp Toker, Director of the Netblocks watchdog organisation monitoring cybersecurity and internet governance.

He told AFP the outage was "remarkably systematic" and "consistent with previous restrictions imposed during Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf events".

Imran Khan and many prominent Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf candidates have been barred from standing for election, and in-person campaigning has been thwarted by a crackdown forcing party leaders to defect or go underground.

Nonetheless, a Gallup Pakistan survey taken in December confirmed Imran Khan is the nation's most popular politician.

Google data shows Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf vastly outstripping competitors in online searches for political parties in Pakistan, with 80 percent of the traffic.

Earlier this month, a similar internet disruption marred Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's online campaign launch event.

Keyboard campaigning 

Imran Khan, 71, was ousted in 2022 after falling out with Pakistan's powerful military leaders who backed him into power in 2018.

In opposition, he waged an unprecedented campaign of defiance against the military establishment which has directly ruled the nation for much of its history.

Imran Khan accused them of engineering his removal from office in a no-confidence vote via a US-backed conspiracy, and of plotting an assassination attempt that saw him wounded.

The crackdown against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf began after Imran Khan's brief arrest last May sparked riots, with Islamabad saying it had been targeted by "anti-state" violence.

Imran Khan is currently languishing in jail after a second arrest in August, and has been barred from standing for office over a graft conviction.

He says the avalanche of legal cases burying him have been triggered by the military establishment to prevent him from leading Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf back to power.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf -- credited with running a tech-savvy campaign in 2018 -- has attempted to mobilise on social media to circumvent the restrictions.

As Imran Khan grapples with the courts, three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif has returned from self-imposed exile and seen his corruption cases dissolve -- a sign analysts say he is the army's favoured candidate.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)



from NDTV News-World-news https://ift.tt/CwDJ2da

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Muhammad Now The Most Popular Name For A Baby In Great Britain, Data Shows

427 years after William Shakespeare wrote it for the first time in the great "tragedy" Romeo & Juliet, England is asking the quintessential question - "What's in a name?" - And this time wondering what significance that question might hold in another 42.7 years. The Department of Statistics in the United Kingdom has revealed in its latest dataset that Muhammad is officially the most popular name for a newborn boy in England and Wales. More than 4,600 babies were registered with that name in 2023 - the highest for a boy. Muhammad was the second-most popular name in 2022 as well. Noah, once the most popular name in UK, came a distant second this year, according to the Office for National Statistics or ONS. But the staff at Great Britain's statistical office has in-fact been observing the trend for a while now. Jotting down the most popular names in the UK, besides other important statistics, it revealed that Muhammad has been among the top 10 names for...
Post a Comment
Read more

US Issues $25-Million Bounty On Venezuela President On Day Of His Oath

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose nearly 12 years in office have been marked by deep economic and social crisis, was sworn in for a third term on Friday, despite a six-month-long election dispute, international calls for him to stand aside and an increase in the US reward offered for his capture. Maduro, president since 2013, was declared the winner of July's election by both Venezuela's electoral authority and top court, though detailed tallies confirming his victory have never been published. Venezuela's opposition says ballot box-level tallies show a landslide win for its former candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who is recognized as president-elect by several countries including the United States. International election observers said the vote was not democratic. The months since the election have seen Gonzalez's flight to Spain in September, his ally Maria Corina Machado going into hiding in Venezuela, and the detentions of high-profile opposition figures and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's Official, Kamala Harris Is Democratic Candidate For US Election

US Vice President Kamala Harris effectively secured the Democratic party's presidential nomination Friday, confirming her remarkable rise to party standard bearer in November's showdown against Republican Donald Trump. Kamala Harris was the sole candidate on the ballot for a five-day electronic vote of nearly 4,000 party convention delegates. She will be officially crowned at a Chicago convention later this month. "I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States," Kamala Harris, 59, said on a phone-in to a party celebration after securing enough votes by the second day of the marathon vote. In the two weeks since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, Kamala Harris has gained full control of the party. No other Democrats stepped forward to challenge her elevation to the top of the ticket, making her confirmation as the first Black and South Asian woman ever to secure a major party's nomination a formality. The a...
Post a Comment
Read more