In England, people can be arrested for planning a riot online. In Switzerland, people can get prosecuted if they click on the Like button on anti-Semitic posts. In Indonesia, people can go to jail if they say there is no God. And liking just another country means trouble in UAE.
Similar thing happens in Pakistan, but worse.
A 30 year old Taimoor Raza, is Pakistani sentenced to death for making disparaging remarks about the prophet Mohammed, his wives and companions, on Facebook.
"An anti-terrorism court of Bahawalpur has awarded him the death sentence," said Shafiq Qureshi, public prosecutor in Bahawalpur, south of provincial capital Lahore. "It is the first-ever death sentence in a case that involves social media."
The conviction comes amid rising cultural and religious tension in Pakistan, a majority Muslim country, over blasphemy. The country has launched an alleged defamation on social media, with Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan threatened to block all social media websites with "blasphemous content."
As for Raza, his blasphemy trial fell under the counterterrorism court because his charge sheet included counterterrorism offences linked to hate speech.
Qureshi said that Raza was arrested after playing blasphemous and hate speech material on his mobile phone at a bus stop in Bahawalpur, where a counterterrorism officer arrested him and seized his phone.
Qureshi also added that Raza belongs to the minority Shia community. In the court, he accused of spreading "hate speech" against the Deobandi sect, which adheres to a strict school of Sunni Islam.
