Interior Minister Rehman Malik tweeted on Friday evening that a decision has been taken to unblock the site in 24 hours.
“I chaired a high level meeting with all stakeholders on the Youtube. Good job by PTA to block anti-Islamic material! Pl expect Youtube unblocked in 24hrs”
The move comes almost a month after the minister, whose ministry is not linked to either the Ministry of Information Technology, nor the blocking agency Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), formed a committee to look into ways how the video sharing site could be unblocked while not in conflict with court orders on blasphemous material.
Malik has maintained on numerous occasions that any decision to unblock the site would be taken by the Cabinet, where it was decided to block the site in the first place. His tweet indicates that the government, after failing to convince Google, or YouTube, has managed to put in place individual blocks on urls for the video in a work around to reopen the site.
The site had been blocked on September 17, 2012 by the Cabinet in the immediate aftermath of mass riots in Pakistan reacting to a clip from an amateurishly produced sacrilegious film.
Malik added that those who had been pressing him to unblock the site should be happy now.
“I chaired a high level meeting with all stakeholders on the Youtube. Good job by PTA to block anti-Islamic material! Pl expect Youtube unblocked in 24hrs”
The move comes almost a month after the minister, whose ministry is not linked to either the Ministry of Information Technology, nor the blocking agency Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), formed a committee to look into ways how the video sharing site could be unblocked while not in conflict with court orders on blasphemous material.
Malik has maintained on numerous occasions that any decision to unblock the site would be taken by the Cabinet, where it was decided to block the site in the first place. His tweet indicates that the government, after failing to convince Google, or YouTube, has managed to put in place individual blocks on urls for the video in a work around to reopen the site.
The site had been blocked on September 17, 2012 by the Cabinet in the immediate aftermath of mass riots in Pakistan reacting to a clip from an amateurishly produced sacrilegious film.
Malik added that those who had been pressing him to unblock the site should be happy now.