Here we go again. The Supreme Court of Pakistan decides in its infinite wisdom that the banning of websites displaying the cartoons published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten is essential to the morally righteous path every citizen of Pakistan must endure. The rest of the public follow. The press make whimpering noises, government lackeys hail the Supreme Court’s decision and the only ones left holding their heads in shame and embarrassment are those who actually believe, perhaps naively, in the freedoms afforded to Pakistanis.

We might as well be sheep. Public servants dictate their whim to us and we listen, bleating our acquiescence by not saying a word. Internet service providers across Pakistan have been ordered by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to refuse to serve up any website that publishes the offending cartoons. The PTA in turn was ordered by the Supreme Court of Pakistan (no less) to impose this impossible directive. In order to try and comply with the orders of the Supreme Court, the “awesome power” of the Pakistan Internet Exchange was brought into play. And someone, in this overly zealous implementation, managed to black list the entire blogspot.com domain.

This has been more a fiasco than anything else. The government, in its attempt to ban these websites, has effectively silenced hundreds, if not thousands, of Pakistani bloggers – some of whom were actively condemning the publication of these “blasphemous cartoons”. (On a side note, the Jyllands-Posten website itself, interestingly, faces no such blockade from the Pakistani authorities and is freely accessible over the internet.)

As has been noted over the years, censorship of the internet is at best a futile exercise. Simply adding a few words to a black list and filtering out the pages will not block access to these sites. Certainly, it will hinder people from accessing the sites by forcing users to access them through slower, more indirect means. By design, the internet is a resilient and redundant network of computers that are linked together through a vast universe of electronic pathways. Block access to one route and another is immediately available. The only sure-fire way to block access to a particular website is to ban the internet altogether. Let’s see the government of Pakistan try and get away with that and still maintain their façade of polished and “enlightened moderation”.

Pakistan is already burdened with many other problems that it must overcome on the path to becoming a modern, developing nation. Is it really necessary to tarnish the image of this country further by creating laws and issuing directives that make us appear backwards and insecure about our own decision-making abilities? One can only hope the authorities realise, sooner rather than later, that the banning of these websites will do far more harm to this country’s image than a few offending websites ever could.