ISLAMABAD: As claimed by the owner of the page Taimur Rahman, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has blocked ‘Laal Page’, the largest leftist page in South Asia with over 408,000 members, along with a number of other secular pages. But as per our information the page has been removed by facebook not PTA because they page is not accessible from anywhere in the world and this only happens when facebook officially removes the page. According to our views this can be possible because a lot of people in Pakistan differ from the views of “LAAL” page so they might have reported the page as hate speech.
From Laal the band, to Laal the Banned. PTA Blocks Laal in Pakistan. Your next 🙂 pic.twitter.com/LZ8SBXdHN0
— Dr. Taimur Rahman (@Taimur_Laal) June 5, 2014
PTA (Pakistani Taliban Authority ) Blocks Laal Page http://t.co/GeP0aNSV8k — Dr. Taimur Rahman (@Taimur_Laal) June 5, 2014
PTA Blocks Laal Page That’s right folks. The largest leftist page in South Asia with over 408,000 members has… http://t.co/Vh9yThOuFp
— Dr. Taimur Rahman (@Taimur_Laal) June 5, 2014
For further information about Laal band and its official Facebook Page; click here
A note my Taimur Rahman
That’s right folks. The largest leftist page in South Asia with over 408,000 members has been banned by Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (along with a number of other secular pages). We have been running this page since 2009 when we started the band. And over the last five years it grew to become a very central hub for progressive ideas, especially with respect to the struggle against extremism and the Taliban. At our best we engaged over 100,000 people a week and our total viral reach would even cross 2 million people in a week. We were adding up to 12,000 people to our wall on a weekly basis at our best. Even working at average efficiency unto 40-50,000 people would write on our wall every week and a couple our total viral reach was always in hundreds of thousands. Without any doubt, it was the largest network that the left in Pakistan had been able to build in our times.
Not only did we bring you entertainment, music, and jokes, we brought you lectures on philosophy, posts about the labour movement, women’s emancipation, struggles against national oppression, democratic movements, and so much else. Whether people agreed or disagreed with our philosophy or arguments, every democratic and progressive minded individual respected the efforts of the band and the group to educate young people in the spirit of progressive politics.
Nor was this page only accessed by the rich and infamous. In fact, thanks to our hard fought grassroots activism we had factory workers, trade unions, peasant associations, even bhatta workers on our page. They would not write but they would always check the page for news and information about struggles. It was genuinely reaching out to the masses that we wish to organise.
But sadly this seemed to have been too much for our masters. The page today is accessible to all those who are outside of Pakistan but if you are using the internet from within Pakistan (and that was 90% of our members) any attempt to access Laal will just bring you back to your own newsfeed. Almost like it simply does not exist.
There has been no official notification. There has been no warning. There hasn’t even been a letter or an email of warning. They didn’t say, we don’t like the support your giving the Baloch, or your opposition to Islamic extremism. They didn’t say communism has been banned in Pakistan since 1954. They didn’t even send a tanga to pick me up and take me to the police station like they did with Faiz and Hameed Aktar sahib.
But fikir not. We are not the type of people who are easily dissuaded from our revolutionary goals and progressive politics by such dirty tactics. Vo Faiz sahib nay kya khoob kaha tha key:
Matah e loh o qalam chin gaye tu kya gham hai.
Keh khoon e dil main dobo li hain ungliya mainay.
So there is no question of losing hope. Here’s the plan of action my friends.
1) Please click “follow” on my profile so that I can continue to disturb you guys with our progressive ideas and remind you again and again that we need to do something about the world in which we live.
2) We will restart the page, even if we have to start from 1 member, and we will rebuild it not only to its former glory but even beyond. Please help us in this regard by rejoining our page once we have it up and running again and encouraging your friends to do the same.
3) The most immediate gesture of solidarity that you can do for us is to share this very status so that everyone knows the dirty trick that PTA has played on the left in Pakistan.
4) Perhaps this may be a good time for you my friend to realise that to turn the tide of this reactionary onslaught in Pakistan, we need to work together in an organised manner. Help us out my friends. We cannot do this alone. We need your support and solidarity. Not just in words but more importantly in deeds. We need an organised left in Pakistan. Not the inchoate informal network of personal friends that we continuously rely on whenever something goes wrong. You all know how its organised. I don’t need to tell you. If we get organised, things will get better
