In this era of history, the internet is needed in every sphere of life from education to health and also in this era, it is a tragedy to have the internet shut down at different times in Pakistan. VPN and cyber security provider Surfshark reported that Pakistan has the highest internet restrictions in 2023 and third worst performer in terms of internet shutdowns.
Pakistan is third among the 42 countries that do have internet restrictions, and all of these restrictions have been imposed because of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Arrest on 9 May.
After the 9 May incidents in Pakistan, mobile networks and social networking sites including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube were completely shut down at different times of the day for several days after 9 May.
The highest internet outage has occurred in Central Asia, in which Pakistan ranks third after Iran and India. Total internet outages occurred in Iran 14 times due to public protests in different parts of the country against the government policies.
The second number of internet shutdowns is in India, which has shut down the internet 9 times. On the occasion of various protests, two more incidents have also been included in this report, in which the internet was shut down in Jammu and Kashmir by the Indian government. If these two incidents are also included in the order, the total number of shutdowns in India will be 11 in six-month time frame.
More than two-thirds of Internet shutdowns have been related to public protests over social and political issues, highlighting the importance of the Internet’s role in sharing information between people in difficult situations.
