Pakistan internet shutdown as opposition campaign launches

Internet monitor Netblocks has reported a nationwide disruption of social media platforms in Pakistan yesterday as the country’s leading opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) launched an online fundraising campaign ahead of the general election in February.

Netblocks took to X/ Twitter on Sunday to report that its live metrics were revealing “a nation-scale disruption to social media platforms, across Pakistan”. Affected platforms included X/Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Netblocks also pointed out that the incident occurred just as former PM Imran Khan’s party, PTI, was about to launch its virtual election fundraising telethon.

Khan’s PTI announced that its telethon and manifesto launch would happen at 9pm on Sunday, but by 6pm users reported being unable to access social media platforms in several areas of the country.

Others complained of internet services being slow.

Despite these metrics the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has denied that it had been ordered to shutdown various platforms and added that it had not received any complaints about outages,

However, the PTA has openly declared restrictions in the past, including last May, following Khan’s arrest, when the authority shut down mobile internet services “indefinitely” following the ensuing protests.

According to a report by virtual private network provider Surfshark, Pakistan is ranked behind Iran and India as the countries leading the list of regimes that imposed internet restrictions during the first half of last year, with Asia being the focal point of most internet shutdowns.

Economy

Such shutdowns have previously had a devastating impact on Pakistan’s economy.

The day after Khan’s arrest Reuters reported that point-of-sale transactions routed through Pakistan’s main digital payment systems fell by around 50% according to the region’s two largest payments system operators, 1LINK and Habib Bank Limited.

According to the Internet Society’s monitor Pulse, it’s becoming an increasingly common tactic for governments to shutdown the internet on a national or sub-national level to either control civil unrest, stem the flow of misinformation, sway the results of general elections or to gain strategic advantages in warring territories.

As the Israel-Gaza conflict escalated at the end of October, Palestinian telecoms provider Jawwal reported a “complete interruption of all communication and internet services with the Gaza strip in light of the ongoing aggression”.

The move prompted human rights advocacy NGO, Human Rights Watch, to comment that the blackout risked providing cover for atrocities and human rights violations.

Emergency connectivity

Last year, human rights activist Siyabulela Mandela spoke to TechInformed about the importance of emergency connectivity after the Ugandan ruling party cut internet access a week before the 2021 general election.

Mandela predicted that blackouts would be used by other regimes as a tactic.

“We need to find alternative ways to remain connected and not give too much autonomy to these regimes,” he added.

The danger of this however, is that big tech is left to make the decisions normally taken by national governments or NATO – as was the case with comms satellite Starlink, which Musk chose to leave deactivated following an attack by Ukraine on Russia’s navy off the coast of Crimea in 2022.

Confessing on his platform X last September that he did not want to be “complicit in a major act of war” some argued that it was not his decision to make.

However, Musk was not on a military contract when he refused the Crimea request, raising questions as to whether the military needs to be more explicit in future contracts that services or products it purchases can be used in war.