ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s information minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain on Wednesday said the country would never escape the “economic crisis” it was facing if judicial reforms were not carried out, slamming a decision this week by a provincial high court to ban social media app TikTok.
The Sindh High Court on Monday ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to suspend the application immediately for “spreading immorality.” The next hearing in the case is on July 8.
“Since yesterday my head is spinning after reading the court verdict on the ban on Tiktok,” Hussain wrote on Twitter.
“If judicial reforms are not carried out, the country will never be able to get out of the economic crisis … Already the country is suffering billions of dollars in losses at the hands of such judicial activism.”
TikTok
— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) June 30, 2021
Government functionaries usually restrain from commenting on court orders.
TikTok has been banned in Pakistan twice before over “immoral content.”
On March 11, the Peshawar High Court had ordered the app be blocked in the country based on a petition alleging it had obscene content.
Last October, PTA blocked TikTok for similar reasons, but after 10 days it reversed its decision saying the company’s owners, China-based ByteDance, had agreed to moderate content in Pakistan.
