New Delhi: Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s official YouTube channel has been blocked in India.
“This content is currently unavailable in this country because of an order from the government related to national security or public order,” is the message which can be seen by viewers visiting the channel.
The Indian government recently banned 16 other prominent Pakistani YouTube channels, including those of prominent news outlets such as Dawn, Samaa TV, ARY News, Geo News and Bol News, days after 26 innocent civilians were shot dead in a deadly terror attack in Jammu & Kashmir’s tourist hotspot Pahalgam.
The government crackdown, based on recommendations from the Ministry of Home Affairs, is because these channels have been spreading provocative, communally-sensitive content and misinformation targeting India and its security forces post the Pahalgam attack.
Individual accounts of some journalists like Irshad Bhatti, Asma Shirazi, Umar Cheema and Muneeb Farooq, as well as cricketer-turned-commentator Shoaib Akhtar’s channel have also been blocked in India.
India has also warned the BBC over what it termed as “biased reporting” of the Pahalgam terror attack. Raising objection over its description of terrorists as “militants”, the Ministry of External Affairs conveyed its concerns to BBC’s India Head Jackie Martin.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have vowed to track down and punish the terrorists and their handlers who carried out the Pahalgam massacre.
