Protests by thousands in Pakistan’s capital last month demanding the release of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan prompted hundreds of arrests, but digital rights campaigners said nationwide internet shutdowns and slowdowns.
Businesses that rely on the internet have complained that Pakistan could lose tens of millions of dollars in revenue due to the imposition of a national firewall to monitor and regulate content and social media platforms and prolonged internet outages.
The government denies any attempt at censorship.
“We are seeing a loss of citizen control over basic IT and digital infrastructure, made worse by a lack of transparency,” said Usama Khilji, a leading digital rights activist. “It’s almost like a creeping coup.”
In Layyah, a small town in south-eastern Pakistan, getting a stable Internet connection requires Sehrish Bano to balance his laptop and toggle between three different connections.
More often than not, she said, none of them work.
The 25-year-old said poor, unreliable internet connections hampered her ability to make a living as a freelance video editor and complete her online graphic design course.
“I can’t take online classes because Zoom keeps freezing and I can’t understand what my teacher is saying,” she said. Compared to three months ago, “even simple things like sending an audio message via WhatsApp or downloading a picture or PDF take five times longer.”
Internet speeds have dropped by more than 30% in the past three months, Shehzad Arshad, president of the Wireless and Internet Providers Association of Pakistan, an advisory body for Internet service providers, told Reuters.
Arshad attributed the decline to the government’s use of “web management systems or firewalls.”
Fariha Aziz, co-founder of Bolo V, a digital rights and civil liberties group, alleged that there was no approval of the official firewall and that the authorities were unclear on the issue.
“This sustained obscurity seems to be official government policy,” Aziz said. Rights group Amnesty International has also called on Pakistan to be transparent about internet restrictions.
“The lack of clarity by Pakistani authorities regarding the use of monitoring and surveillance technologies to block content, slow down and control internet speeds is a cause for concern,” Amnesty technologist Jure van Bergen said in August.
“Time and again, the use of such technologies, including national firewalls, has been proven to be incompatible with human rights,” Van Bergen said.
Digital Chess
Aziz said it was clear that the government was aiming to curb freedom of expression and dissent.
“Never before,” she said, has the government “been able to disrupt the entire functionality of an app; usually the entire website or application stops working. But here we’re seeing only media files being disrupted.”
Aziz said the issue is compounded by the government’s efforts to ban the use of virtual private networks (VPNs), which encrypt data and mask IP addresses, allowing users to browse the Internet more securely.
The Pakistani government will no longer ban VPNs and has denied any responsibility for nationwide bandwidth cuts.
The United Nations says Pakistan’s digital divide is huge – more than half the country has no access to the internet due to inadequate digital infrastructure and affordability challenges.
That divide could become a chasm, experts said.
“WhatsApp, sharing voice notes, and links for education and work purposes, has become a way of life,” Aziz said. Government measures that slowed internet speeds, or cut connections altogether, she said, were “creating digital haves and don’ts”.
The problem has become so severe that some people who depend on Internet access for their livelihood are considering leaving the country.
Ehtesham Khan, a freelance photo editor and graphic designer, said he was thinking of moving to Dubai because he was losing clients due to frequent internet outages.
And it’s not just people who are thinking of leaving.
“Companies have already relocated to other places, Dubai, Singapore, where internet access is not a problem,” Khilji said. “Our foreign earnings and Internet exports have declined, and the potential of our IT industry is shrinking day by day because of these problems.”