Twitter, for all its storm-in-a-teacup frenzies of anger, wordplay, hashtag games and silly observations about our mundane lives, has been instrumental in helping the Arab Spring – protestors and anti-government groups would use social media to alert others to their presence, to organise coups and to overthrow the oppressive regimes.
We figure that’s why porn star Belle Knox is angry about having her Twitter account suspended in Pakistan. The Duke University student’s Twitter account is banned in the country, so when users try to reach it, they are met with a message saying ‘This account has been withheld in Pakistan’.
Belle, whose real name is Miriam Weeks, ‘outed’ herself as a porn actress in March, after her appearance in blue movies led to people bullying and threatening to blackmail her. But that’s not her last battle, as she is now taking on Pakistan’s lawmakers. Writing to Forbes.com, she spoke about Abdul Batin, the bureaucrat from the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA), who has written to Twitter to demand the removal of her account because it is ‘blasphemous’ or ‘unethical’.
‘I believe Mr Batin has a problem with me because for whatever reason, I am his poster child: A woman with her own agency and free expression, some icon of perceived cultural degeneration that he feels he can censor to feel better about himself,' Belle’s letter reads. 'If he thinks I am a soft target, he’s going to be surprised. I stand up for sex workers, and will continue to do so because I feel that often, we’re disregarded as casualties.’
The thing is, it’s not the PTA that has the power to control Twitter, it’s Twitter. The company, based in California, is blocking accounts based on requests sent to them by the PTA, The Telegraph reports. However, Belle is totally aware that her case is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to censorship in the country, and there are fears that any sort of political insurgency will be halted through blocks of social media. ‘A lot of political dissent has been blocked under the garb of blocking antireligious or antinational content, disregarding citizens’ right to information and the need for transparency and accountability,’ states Bolo Bhi, an organisation fighting for internet freedom, privacy and gender rights in Pakistan.
In light of this morning’s harrowing news that a pregnant 25 year old was stoned to deathby her father and brothers outside a courthouse in Lahore because she had married a man without their approval, it might be easy to cast off Belle’s actions. Surely, in a country where women can’t even have a child in wedlock with a man they love without being killed in public by their family, porn stars and sex workers’ rights are a long way off and therefore unnecessary to fight for?
Well, no. Because although Belle’s experience of Pakistan’s censorship is from a sex worker’s point of view, if Twitter assists Pakistan in blocking porn stars, where does it stop? Who’s to say they wouldn’t be OK with helping Pakistan block parts of the site where people might be able to find out about these horrific crimes, or even coalesce to overthrow a regime that lets these human rights abuses go unchecked?
And Belle agrees, saying, 'That said, my own curtailment of free expression in Pakistan seems very small on the greater world stage, where political groups based in sovereign countries are being silenced.'
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.