Bangladesh blocks Facebook

Bangladesh has blocked social networking website Facebook over caricatures of Prophet Mohammed and “obnoxious” images of the Muslim-majority country's leaders, an official said on Sunday.

The move came after Pakistan banned access to Facebook, video website YouTube and 1,200 web pages over a row about “blasphemous” content on the Internet.

Facebook was blocked in Bangladesh late on Saturday, the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) said.

The move was ordered as cartoons of the Mohammed on the popular website “hurt the religious sentiments of the country's Muslim population,” said BTRC acting chairman Hasan Mahmud Delwar.

“Some links in the website also contained obnoxious images of our leaders, including the father of the nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and the leader of the Opposition.” He said Facebook would be re-opened once Bangladesh had permanently blocked the offending pages.

The country's anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) said it had arrested one man over the images of political leaders. “A special intelligence team arrested him and he has been charged with spreading malice,” senior RAB official Enamul Kabir said.

He said the arrested man used at least six Facebook accounts to post the images, but officials declined to give details of the depictions, which were not immediately showing up on the site on Sunday.

On Friday, thousands of Bangladeshis took to the streets of the capital Dhaka, demanding that the government ban Facebook over what they called “anti-Islamic propaganda.”

The protests were triggered by an “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” campaign on Facebook, which its anonymous promoters said was in defence of the freedom of expression. Muslims regard all depictions of Islam's founding prophet as blasphemous. “Drawing caricatures of Prophet Mohammed is an attack on Islam and extremely humiliating for Islam,” Dhaka protest organiser A.T.M. Hemayet Uddin told thousands of cheering supporters.

In a counter-demonstration, Dhaka University students held a rally on the campus late on Saturday, urging authorities to lift the Facebook block immediately, according to the Daily Star.

Pakistan has restored access to YouTube, but Facebook and 1,200 web pages remain blocked.

Last year, Bangladesh also blocked YouTube for several days after the website hosted a recording of an angry dispute between Ms. Hasina and Army officers over a deadly military mutiny.

Bangladesh has nearly one million Facebook account holders — a sixth of all Internet users, according to the BTRC. Ms. Hasina and Opposition leader Khaleda Zia have fan pages on Facebook.