“Creeping coup”: In Pakistan, lack of internet access costs livelihoods | News

A protest by thousands in the Pakistani capital last month demanding the release of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan sparked the arrests of hundreds, but also, digital rights advocates say, more outages and disruptions. nationwide internet slowdowns.

Pakistan has a history of restricting internet access in response to political unrest, ban social media sites or simply temporarily shutting down the Internet.

United States Internet shutdowns condemned in Pakistan, following February’s parliamentary elections in which Khan’s party won the largest number of seats despite a crackdown on his activities.

Businesses that rely on the Internet complain that Pakistan could lose hundreds of millions dollars in revenue following the government’s imposition of a national firewall to monitor and regulate social media content and platforms and prolonged internet disconnections.

The government denies any attempt at censorship.

“We are seeing a loss of civilian control over basic IT and digital infrastructure, compounded by a lack of transparency,” said Usama Khilji, a prominent digital rights activist.

“It’s almost like a creeping coup.”

In Layyah, a small town in southeastern Pakistan, to get a stable internet connection, Sehrish Bano has to move from room to room balancing his laptop and switching between the three different connections.

More often than not, she says, none of them work.

The 25-year-old said poor and unreliable internet connections made it difficult for her to earn a living as a freelance video editor and complete her online graphic design course.

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The opacity of Pakistani authorities regarding the use of control and surveillance technologies that block content, slow down and control internet speeds is an alarming concern.

Jurre Van Bergen, technologist, Amnesty International

“I can’t take online classes because Zoom gets stuck and I don’t understand what my teacher is saying,” she said. Compared to three months ago, “even simple things like sending an audio message via WhatsApp or downloading an image or PDF take five times longer.”

Internet speeds have fallen by more than 30% in the past three months, Shahzad Arshad, president of the Wireless and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan, an advisory body for Internet service providers, told Context .

Arshad attributed the decline to the government’s deployment of a “web management system or firewall.”

Farieha Aziz, co-founder of Bolo Bhi, a digital rights and civil liberties group, said there had been no acknowledgment of the existence of an official firewall and blamed authorities for not being honest on the issue.

“It appears that sustained opacity is official government policy,” Aziz told Context.

Rights organization Amnesty International also called on Pakistan to be transparent about internet disruptions.

“The opacity of Pakistani authorities regarding the use of control and surveillance technologies that block content, slow down and control internet speeds is an alarming concern,” Jurre Van Bergen, a technologist told Amnesty in August.

“Time and time again, the use of such technologies, including national firewalls, has been shown to be incompatible with human rights,” Van Bergen said.

Digital chasm

Aziz said it was clear the government’s goal was to suppress free speech and dissent.

“Never before,” she said, has the government “been able to disrupt an entire function of an app; usually the whole website or app stops working. But here we see that only media files are disturbed.

Aziz said the problem was made worse by government attempts to restrict the use of virtual private networks (VPNs), which encrypt data and hide IP addresses, allowing users to browse the internet more securely.

The Pakistani government has said it will no longer pursue a ban on VPNs and denies responsibility for slowing bandwidths nationwide.

United Nations says Pakistan’s digital divide is vast — more than half the country does not have access to the internet due to inadequate digital infrastructure and affordability issues.

This divide could become a chasm, experts say.

“WhatsApp, sharing voice notes and links for educational and professional purposes, has become a way of life,” Aziz said. Government measures that slowed internet speeds, or cut off connections altogether, she said, “created digital haves and have-nots.”

The problem has become so serious that some whose livelihoods depend on internet access are considering leaving the country.

Ehtesham Khan, a freelance photo editor and graphic designer, said he was considering moving to Dubai because frequent internet outages had caused him to lose clients.

And it’s not just individuals who are thinking about leaving.

“Companies are already moving to other locations, Dubai and Singapore, where internet access is not a problem,” Khilji said.

“Our foreign income and Internet exports have declined, and the potential of our IT industry is shrinking day by day because of these problems.”

This story was published with permission from Thomson Reuters Foundationthe charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, covering humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit https://www.context.news/.