Pakistan Bans Access to YouTube

Pakistan has blocked the country’s YouTube access over anti-Islamic videos on the site, the AP reports. One official conceded that a particular video offended authorities: a trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch legislator Geert Wilders. The filmmaker has said that his piece paints Islam as a fascist religion that glorifies violence against homosexuals and women.

Pakistan’s telecom chief has asked web surfers to write YouTube to have the video pulled, but this isn’t the first instance of Internet censorship in Pakistan: Officials have also blocked access to controversial 2006 drawings of the Prophet Muhammad. Other countries have blocked YouTube before; Thailand, Turkey, and Morocco have all barred the site due to clips they deemed offensive. (More YouTube stories.)