Pakistan High Court bans TikTok for ‘spreading immorality’, next hearing on July 8

Islamabad: A high court in Pakistan on Monday ordered to temporarily suspend the popular Chinese video-sharing app TikTok for ‘spreading immorality’.

The Sindh High Court ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to suspend the app until the next hearing on July 8.

The order was issued by the court on the petition by a citizen who alleged that TikTok was spreading “immorality and obscenity in the country”.

It was for the second time that the app has been banned in the country this year. In March, the Peshawar High Court (PHC) had taken a similar action on a petition filed by several citizens.

However, the PHC, after a few weeks, had lifted the ban by asking the PTA to take measures so that no “immoral content” was uploaded.

Last year in October, the PTA for the first time banned TikTok after receiving complaints over indecent and immoral content but lifted the ban after 10 days.

The Chinese app has assured the PTA that it would operate as per the local laws to ensure that no ‘indecent content’ was uploaded.

The app, owned by China’s ByteDance, has been downloaded almost 39 million times in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has slammed the recent Sindh High Court`s decision to ban the Chinese app TikTok, saying the country has suffered losses worth billions of dollars due to “judicial activism”.

In a tweet, the minister said the country would never be able to come out of an economic crisis unless judicial reforms were implemented.

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