Sexpression in the People’s Republic of Pornistan

By Kamran Rehmat –

Anyone who’s ever been younger here cannot have escaped today. Anyone who denies so is probably, a politician

Among the collectibles from the dingy room in Abbotabad where once the world’s most wanted man lived is evidence that he was deeply committed to not only grand schemes with a grain of chill about it but also crimes of passion — on the Internet. Osama bin Laden, the Americans would have us believe, was into feasting his eyes big time. This, of course, would not have been cause to break with regular programming — complete with a background score rising to a crescendo — but for the fact that he was the grand daddy of terror.

What however, made headlines was that he indeed had feet of clay — and a lustful heart that coveted torrents in a country that itself got into the news for apparently, being the numero uno in living it up king size. Welcome to Maal Borrow country (maal as in titillation stuff and borrow as in borrowed from the Internet)! Consider the slight twist in the correct sounding description a ‘smoke’screen to avert libel.

For reasons best known to them, the Yankees have not revealed Bin Laden’s Awesome Quotient: was it twosomes or threesomes that appealed to his imagination or a different worldview of the animal planet (not to be confused with the TV channel that usually does not require PG). It is also unclear if there is a direct link between the former Al Qaeda chief’s late night indulgences (time of the day, is admittedly a presumption here since you don’t always manage to keep the hours when playing hideous kinky) with how he fathered four children on the run.

All the deliveries were Made in Pornistan — as Pakistan has been rather effusively dubbed for the wayward trawling her citizens indulge in cyberspace. Two of the offsprings in fact, arrived in government hospitals — no wonder the Americans were always apprehensive of some connect. For all you know, they might have reasons to think this was the real porn in the posterior!

All of this however, does not detract from the well indulged national pastime in the cornerless world of cyberspace. Pakistanis, it would appear, are in a class of their voyeuristic own. A disputed Fox News account even suggested Pakistan led the world in porn searches.

Here’s an excerpted account of the infamous report:

They may call it the “Land of the Pure,” but Pakistan turns out to be anything but. Google ranks Pakistan No. 1 in the world in searches for pornographic terms, outranking every other country in the world in searches per person for certain sex-related content.

Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for “horse sex” since 2004, “donkey sex” since 2007, “rape pictures” between 2004 and 2009, “rape sex” since 2004, “child sex” between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, “animal sex” since 2004 and “dog sex” since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.

The country also is tops — or has been No. 1 — in searches for “sex,” “camel sex,” “rape video,” “child sex video” and some other searches that can’t be printed here.

Fox News however, admitted that while Pakistan ranked No. 1 in all the searches listed above on Google Trends, but it appeared on only some of them in Google Insights.  But in a classic case of first impression being (nearly) the last, the stereotype ruled the roost even though Google was forced to clarify that that the data was not always accurate. This is how search giant explained it:

“We do our best to provide accurate data and to provide insights into broad search patterns, but the results for a given query may contain inaccuracies due to data sampling issues, approximations, or incomplete data for the terms entered.”

In Pakistan, the report spawned a debate on pornography. Irate experts, for instance, were quick to point out how only little more than five per cent of Pakistan’s population used the Internet, bringing into serious doubt the credibility of Fox News claims, which were based on a rather small sample in the first place.

The Fox reporter was deemed to have deliberately ignored that even if porn searches were dominated by Pakistanis, the country itself was not where the content originated. It was argued that the porn industry as it were mostly came from the First World — in U.S. for instance, a new adult-film is being created every 39 minutes.

That the culture of porn-viewing is pervasive however, cannot be denied. In fact, images of dark and dingy cubicles immediately come to mind in the Pakistani context.

Per force, on at least two occasions in Lahore that I had to seek recourse to a connection at an Internet joint thanks to power playing truant at a friend’s place, one was left frustrated. Each and every single site previously visited was x-rated — and on both the terminals one tried. Xalim loag, I said under my breath, and walked out.

One early ambition was to set up an Internet café with a difference. It was to be sleekly furnished in terms of both equipment and space — plus speed that would have left Shoaib Akhtar breathless. The only condition would be that this would be a place for clean navigation, not getting Laden, Osama-style.

However, the fear of being left in a club of one — with no bills at the cash counter prevented the realization of that lofty goal.

But this is not to suggest piety begins at a terminal near you. Anyone who’s ever been younger  here — like our current ‘derailed’ minister or even his predecessor — cannot have escaped totay, local parlance for porn clips. Anyone who denies so is probably, a politician.

Is it any wonder therefore, that a very influential political family in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa — which runs a profitable totay business in their cinema halls with particular focus on local nether regions — continues to live in denial?

As an aside, I remember a frozen frame in one of the leading monthlies from Karachi years ago not so much for capturing Musarrat Shaheen but the caption that followed her name: A huge career behind her!

But where some trawl for porn, others will crawl from the woodworks to snap the twain.

In September 2010, a hacker defaced the official website of the Supreme Court of Pakistan to draw the attention of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to permanently ban and block access to pornographic content on the Internet in the country.

In October last year, the website of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority was also defaced by the same hacker, this time demanding a blanket ban on all websites containing explicit material.

Signing himself in as ‘Zombie_Ksa, he left a less-than-affectionate note for the PTA head honcho:

Ask yourself why Pakistan Telecommunication Authority is victim of ZombiE_KsA ? Baby I’m here to tell this **** world that we are Pakistan, not Pornistan…and
Sir I need your help. Since you have powerful balls and I request you to take action to ban porn sites in Pakistan. Read it again I request you to BAN Pornographic sites in Pakistan.

The very next month, the PTA announced it was in the process of banning the thousand most frequented pornographic websites in Pakistan. The regulatory body also distributed a list of about 1700 words that it described as obscene (1,109 in English and 586 in Urdu) to mobile network operators and gave them seven days to mandatorily implement SMS filtering.

Many of the banned words were expletives or sexual slang, but the list included medical terms such as athlete’s foot and benign words such as Jesus and Budweiserapart from American football jerseys in the NFL, tampon and headlights.

Following widespread ridicule, particularly on the social media, the PTA backed down and promised more consultation on the final list of banned words.

PTA in collaboration with PTCL has also been surreptitiously blocking porn and other sites regarded as “undesirable” or “offensive”. As of January 1, 2012, the block first detected in November remains in place.

Recently, UK broadsheet The Telegraph detailed a “crackdown” led by a 16-year-old Karachiite to offset the plans of Pakistan’s porn partakers on the Web. Ghazi Abdullah tracked down 780,000 adult sites in six months flat to help the PTA to block the “fun”.

Ghazi’s actions were also fueled by anger at descriptions about Pakistan leading the world in search of porn.

“I consider this as my religious and national task to do. If my elders don’t do this for my generation, than I will do it for mine and forthcoming generations,” he told the paper.

He roped in an IT professional and remains secretive about exactly how they did it, fearing it will help website developers evade the ban.

And now, the Internet Service Providers Association has also backed a plan to for a National URL Filtering and Blocking System, which will enable the en masseblocking of websites that contain pornographic content. The system is to be implemented at the internet gateways of PTCL and TWA — the two submarine cables connecting Pakistan with the global Internet.

There goes your freedom of sexpression.

The writer is otherwise a serious commentator