The protection level of the Wikipedia page of Maryam Nawaz Sharif, who was sentenced to seven-year imprisonment by an accountability court on Friday in the Avenfield properties reference, was changed to semi-protected on Saturday following repeated attempts to vandalise the page.
The revision history of Maryam's page shows that users on Friday attempted to add words like criminal and 'chor' [thief] to her information and also tried to edit her year of birth from 1973 to 1960.
Wikipedia then moved to change the status of her page to semi-protected because of violations of its 'biographies of living persons policy'. It will now become difficult for bots and new users to edit the page.
Although this is not the first time that her page has been protected, its protection level had previously been changed for shorter periods of time compared to the one-year change this time.
She is also not the only political figure whose page has been protected as her father's page also remains semi-protected since its status was changed around his disqualification by the Supreme Court in Panama Papers case.
Pages of other prominent politicians like Asif Ali Zardari and Imran Khan are also semi-protected.
A day earlier, Nawaz Sharif was sentenced to 10 years in prison for owning assets beyond known sources of income while Maryam was given seven years for abetting him; her husband retired captain Safdar was handed a one-year sentence for not cooperating with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and aiding Nawaz and Maryam.
The father and daughter are currently in London.
