Pakistan on Sunday restored access to Twitter after blocking the social networking site following posts about a Facebook competition on Prophet's depictions.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) restored the access before midnight on Sunday, about twelve hours after the access had been blocked.
Initially, the social networking site refused to block the tweets which is said to have been blasphemous. But the ban did not deter the access to the site for some Pakistani users as they were reportedly able to access Twitter via smartphones.
Speaking before lifting the ban, PTA spokesman Mohammad Younis Khan said that there was "blasphemous material" on Twitter and that the organisers of the competition had been "trying to hurt Muslim feelings," according to an AFP report.
Although the details about the blasphemous content has not been available, it has been alleged that the tweets demanded participation in a campaign, "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day," that was launched in 2010 by a Facebook user to promote May 20 as the "Draw Muhammad Day" to support freedom of expression.
But then a Pakistani court blocked the campaign page on Facebook two years ago since depicting the Prophet is considered blasphemous and against Islam.
According to authorities, while Facebook agreed to prevent the campaign page from being accessed in Pakistan, Twitter refused to do so and that led the Ministry of Information Technology to block access to the site.
"Both Facebook and Twitter were involved. We negotiated with both. Facebook has agreed to remove the stuff but Twitter is not responding to us," Khan said.
The "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" campaign was started by a Seattle artist, Molly Norris, following threats against the Comedy Central show "South Park" for depicting Muhammad in a bear suit.
