Twitter blocked across Pakistan over ‘blasphemous drawings’

Social media website Twitter was temporarily banned across Pakistan on Sunday by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA.
Twitter was blocked due to an ongoing “competition” of Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) caricatures.
The PTA blocked the access to Twitter directly from the upstream links without notifying Internet Service Providers (ISPs), said Wahajuz Siraf, convener for Internet Services Providers Association of Pakistan (ISPAK).
Denying the news, PTA spokesperson Colonel Muhammad Younus said that he “does not know anything about the ban”, adding that he “would check” if anything like this has happened.
Express News reported that the Ministry of Information and Technology tried getting through to authorities on Twitter throughout the night and that about five faxes were sent to the micro-blogging website.
Eventually, in reply to PTA’s e-mail, Twitter authorities replied saying that they “cannot stop any individual doing anything of this nature on the website”.
One ISP provider, on condition of anonymity has advised callers registering complaints to use Vtunnel and proxies as an alternate to access Twitter.
Currently, the micro-blogging website is still accessible by means of mobile phones and secure browsers such as Opera Mini.