Bangladesh joins Pakistan in blocking Facebook

Bangladesh has blocked the Facebook social networking site because of “objectionable” materials it contained about the Prophet Mohammad and the country’s political leaders, a telecoms regulatory official said on Sunday. Facebook was barred last week by a court in Pakistan, also overwhelmingly Muslim, because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad.Hundreds of protesters marched through Dhaka on Friday demanding action against Facebook and those accused of defaming the Prophet.The elite security force Rapid Action Battalion on Saturday arrested a man in Dhaka for posting “obnoxious” images of the country’s political leaders, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia.Facebook, popular among Bangladeshis, especially young people, triggered protests by users.
“This was a wrong decision and should be withdrawn immediately,” Mohammad Zafar Iqbal, professor of Computer Science at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, told a television interviewer.

source by- nationalpost.com

Pakistan lifts Facebook ban

Pakistan banned Facebook on 19 May but said it would continue to block individual pages containing "blasphemous" content.online competition that invited people around the world to submit drawings of the prophet Muhammad. Muslims consider all depictions of Muhammad as heretical.Yesterday Bangladesh also banned Facebook, saying it would lift the restriction only when the offending material was removed.
Najibullah Malik, the Pakistani official orchestrating the censorship, said Facebook had removed all "sacrilegious material" from its website and promised that "nothing of this sort will happen in the future". Afternoon a Facebook page entitled "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" was still online.Facebook critics say some drawings on the Muhammad page are so offensive to Muslims that they constitute hate material. They point out that the site has previously censored sensitive material in Pakistan, including blocking a lawyer who tried to set up a satirical page entitled Taliban Times.Pakistan already bans a wide variety of websites with political or human rights content including those run by Baloch or Sindh nationalists, and videos of Pakistani soldiers beating civilians. Pornography, however, is freely available.