New Delhi: Pakistan's prime minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday, February 6, ordered the restoration of Wikipedia, which had been banned by the country's telecom authorities last week for not blocking or removing "sacrilegious content”.

Dawn has reported on a statement issued by the prime minister's office, noting that when the matter was placed before Sharif, he constituted a committee comprising law, economic affairs and information ministers for “preliminary examination of the matter”.

The committee held that Wikipedia was essential to the "dissemination of knowledge and information" and recommended the lifting of the ban.

“Blocking the site in its entirety was not a suitable measure to restrict access to some objectionable content,” the PMO statement said, according to Dawn. “The unintended consequences of this blanket ban, therefore, outweigh its benefits.”

The committee has further been tasked to give recommendations on how to control unlawful online content in a “balanced manner,” the PMO said.

On February 4, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority had banned Wikipedia for not “blocking/removing sacrilegious content” within a 48-hour deadline it had given the site.

The Wikimedia Foundation had said that it received a notification from the Authority on February 1, stating “the services of Wikipedia have been degraded for 48 hours” for failure to remove content deemed “unlawful.”

"We believe that access to knowledge is a human right. A block of Wikipedia in Pakistan denies the fifth most populous nation in the world access to the largest free knowledge repository. If it continues, it will also deprive everyone access to Pakistan's history and culture," the Foundation said.

It had called on the Pakistan government to restore access to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

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