Pakistan High Court temporarily suspends TikTok, next hearing on July 8

A high court in Pakistan on Monday ordered the temporary suspension of the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok for ‘spreading immorality’. It was for the second time that the app has been banned in the country this year. The Sindh High Court ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to ban the applications until the next hearing. The next hearing is on July 8.

The order was issued after a petition filed by a citizen who alleged that the TikTok app was spreading immorality and obscenity in Pakistan.

In March, Peshawar High Court (PHC) imposed the ban on the app as an action towards the petition filed by several citizens. However, the suspension was lifted by PHC by asking PTA to take measures so that no ‘immortal content’ was uploaded.

In October last year, the TikTok app was banned by PTA for a few days over indecent and immoral content. However, the ban was lifted after 10 days.

TikTok app is owned by China's ByteDance which has been downloaded around 39 million times in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said slamming the court’s decision to ban the app, that the country has suffered losses worth billions of dollars due to ‘judicial activism'.

The minister has said in a tweet that the country would never be able to come out of an economic crisis unless judicial reforms were implemented.