Lahore:A staunch critic of the Pakistan A soldier and a YouTuber have been arrested here in Punjab The province was detained for allegedly stirring up “religious hatred” and “defaming institutions,” especially the military, on social media, authorities here said Thursday.
The arrest of Orya Maqbool Jan, a well-known political commentator, comes a week after intelligence agencies allegedly abducted another YouTuber and comedian for criticising the Shehbaz Sharif-led government.
The cybercrime division of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said it raided Khan’s residence in Lahore on Thursday and arrested him for fanning religious hatred against a “senior personality” and institutions.
Jan, a columnist, poet, playwright and former civil servant, has more than a million subscribers on his YouTube channel. Last year, intelligence agencies detained him for several days for openly criticising the powerful military’s role in politics and supporting jailed former prime minister Imran Khan.
Following the arrest of Khan, the supreme founder of the Pakistan-The Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party Last August, several journalists and YouTubers in the country faced arrests, violence and threats amid mass protests.
Earlier last week, another Pakistani YouTuber and comedian, Aun Ali Khosa, was allegedly abducted by intelligence agencies for singing a song critical of the Shehbaz Sharif government and its supporters. However, he had returned home in Punjab province, his lawyer said Monday.
Khosa was among three other social media activists from Khan’s PTI who had been arrested recently, allegedly by intelligence agencies. The other two were Naeem Ahmad Yasin and Arsalan Akbar, and their families have kept them as “missing”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Republic and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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