It is a really surprising move by Nepal government – to ban websites in order to “reduce crime.” According to a latest report, educational sites are being banned under the directive of Nepal Government. One of the most surprising ban is the blockage of a dictionary site:
(photo credit – @l0stanzel)
According to an English Daily, ‘The Kathmandu Post’ article, banning sites is a desperate attempt of the government after its, “failure to provide justice to 13-year-old Nirmala Pant despite such social outcry, this banning of porn is merely a liar’s paradox.”
It says, “the blame on pornography instead of accepting its own incompetence and the failure of its justice system is only a veil the government is using to not address many severe underling issues.” (Kathmandu post)
The article says, “Similarly, various studies done among diverse human civilisations has failed to find any precise correlation between digital erotic content and real world sexual violence against women. As the argument goes, much research evidence has revealed that porn actually functions as a ‘safety valve’ for otherwise violent instinct.”
This is not the fist time Nepal government had tried banning websites. In 2010 I did an analysis of sites blocked in Nepal: (read the report)
At that time sites like Huffington post and Blogspot blogs were blocked in Nepal. I had argued at that time that the banning won’t work for some 5 different reasons (read the 5 reasons).
According to report, 56 websites were banned at that time. Most of the sites banned were innocent and had nothing to do with objectionable contents.
@keshuvko writes in Twitter:
Government of Nepal and Nepal Telecom consider Urban Dictionary as ‘porn’.
Hope it’s not the start of what Niemöller wrote about Nazis.
“First they came for Socialists….
Then they came for me
and by then there was no one left to speak out for me”#Pornban pic.twitter.com/gkV74VyyT1— [keshuvko] (@keshuvko) October 1, 2018
The latest circular of the Nepal Government hasn’t listed the full list of website but, it has officially confirmed that internet is NOT free in Nepal.
And, there are people who have welcomed the move of the government. But, it is to be noted that government censorship has been very unsuccessful in countries like China and other similar countries.
UPDATES:
Surprise!! Both UD and pornhub both working in Opera Mini browser 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/rCIkfxzenG
— ish (@iShzz) October 1, 2018