The Hamilton Spectator
Global Hamilton: Hamilton grew into home for Pakistan-born journalist
Published on April 27, 2015
Featured as the final installment of The Global Hamilton Series highlighting diverse contributions of immigrants to Hamilton’s community
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
Pakistanis divided over internet restrictions
Published Thursday, 20 May 2010
The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool gauges the reaction of Pakistani internet users after a government crackdown on websites seen to be hosting un-Islamic content – restricting access to Facebook and YouTube.
Extract
” As someone who has monitored bans in Pakistani cyberspace in the past, I am not surprised by this Facebook ruling,” said Reba Shahid, editor of the Karachi-based internet magazine, Spider. “It was a sadly predictable next step.
“Pakistan is already portrayed in a negative light abroad, as a backward place with political unrest. Banning first Facebook and now YouTube and others really doesn’t help us dispel those perceptions.
“The internet is something positive and a place where individuals can be expressive. It is worrying that the authorities here don’t give a second thought to restricting our use of it in this way.”Ms Shahid says the ones that will suffer are Pakistan’s internet users and the country’s businesses that advertise on sites like Facebook. “Of course, no one here endorses this particular page on Facebook, but completely blocking access to such a popular website is something that has upset a lot of people too.”
“A few years back, the same thing happened when there was a blanket ban on the whole “blogspot” domain, because some bloggers had chosen to republish the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad by a Danish cartoonist.”
Also mentioned in the BBC video report Pakistani web ban spreads to YouTube
Dareecha
A PAN Localization project – initiative of IDRC, Canada and CRULP, Pakistan
November 2009
Served as a judge for Dareecha website competition, an initiative of the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada and Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP).The project aimed to determine and evaluate sustainable strategies for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) access and local language content generation in rural schools.
DAWN NEWS
Dawn website Blog post
August 19th, 2010 by TV Anchor and Reporter Arshad Sharif
Extract
“The government should not regulate what people access or do not access online,” said Reba Shahid, Editor of Spider magazine, Pakistan’s first magazine on the cyber world.
DAWN NEWS TV
DAWN News program Reporter aired on July 16,2010
Reba Shahid, Editor, Spider magazine and an expert on internet issues, discussing the inaccuracy of FOX News report citing Google trends for online searches from Pakistan
[English captions= work in progress]
Reba Shahid 