KARACHI: One positive feature that has come out of the frequent social media ban is that people are now debating and discussing myriad aspects of the freedom of expression on the internet.

Unsurprisingly, within the cyberspace, some form of hate speech exists with nearly 65 per cent people coming across it on various social media platforms. Fifty six per cent were unaware of the country’s hate speech laws. And 51 per cent felt that they had been a target of online hate speech.

These were some of the key findings of Hate speech: a study of Pakistan’s cyberspace, produced by Bytes For All and authored by Jahanzaib Haque, Editor, Dawn.com, that was launched at a hotel on Saturday.

The data for this survey was gathered from 559 internet users and included analyses of 30 Facebook pages and 30 Twitter accounts.

Mr Haque began his interactive presentation saying it was important to know what constituted hate speech. For the study he had employed the definition as expressed by Frank la Rue, UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

According to the special rapporteur, if for instance a group on Facebook is discussing something but their statements are restricted within the group then that does not constitute hate speech. It is only when spiteful statements are published on mainstream site that it constitutes antagonistic speech.

Other findings that emerged from the study were that 38 per cent politicians had been target of hate speech particularly on Facebook and 10 per cent of media personalities and media groups on Facebook.

Mr Haque then went on to give a listing of the offending pages, and topping the list was Zem TV, an independent online media channel that had a “phenomenally high level of hate speech in the form of users’ comments”.

Imran Khan was second in the list, which Mr Haque felt was unexpected. “One thought that [PTI’s]social media team would be active in counteracting hate speech against them. But there were 11 counts of hate speech per share, which means their team is not so active.”

Twitter, too, displayed antipathy towards politicians and the media with 15,000 tweets examined for this kind of expression. However, Mr Haque admitted that this number was minuscule and one should refrain from in-depth inference from the study that he also termed just a beginning to understand the landscape of cyberspace in Pakistani context.

Following the presentation, there was a panel discussion on the study and related issues.

Faisal Sherjan of Jang Group highlighted words such as funding, secularism and liberal being hurled against individuals and media groups that had connotations of hate speech.

Mohammad Sarfaraz of the Federal Investigation Agency lamented the fact that ever since the Electronic Crimes Ordinance 2007 had lapsed in 2010 they were unable to proceed against cyber criminals.

Senator Saeed Ghani of the Pakistan Peoples Party assured the panellists that the draft cybercrime bill was with the parliamentarians and they were working on it and soon the matter would be resolved.

However, barrister Salahuddin Ahmed felt that the draft bill of cybercrime was inadequate and that “the Pakistan Penal Code needs to update its laws according to the cyberworld”.

The panellists urged Senator Ghani to look into the matter on an urgent basis and impress his fellow lawmakers to remove the loopholes from the draft bill especially as the bill once passed would have significant implications.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2014