THIS is withreference to an opinion article headlined ‘Salute to the virtually silenced’ (Nov 6) by Rafia Zakaria.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) wishes to clarify that under Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA 2016), PTA has been mandated to block/remove unlawful content hosted on the internet. This may include content, that is, blasphemous, indecent, pornographic, defamatory, impersonation, and anti-state etc.

PTA identifies such content completely in accordance with the provisions of PECA 2016 and then takes action. PTA is committed to protecting the public from harmful, illegal and potentially damaging content. Therefore, the writer’s perception that PTA “assaults” the rights of any organisation or limits online freedom for a specific individual is in total contravention of the facts.

Khurram A. Mehran

Islamabad

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2019