On 18 February 2022, amendments were made to the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) which increased the prison sentence for defamation to three to five years. Passed with the help of two presidential ordinances, Pakistan’s already controversial cyber-law has been made more controversial. According to Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Law and Justice Barrister Muhammad Farogh Naseem, the two presidential ordinances were solely aimed at criminalising the spread of so-called “fake news”. “PECA has been used to silence freedom of expression on the pretext of combating ‘fake news’, cybercrime, and…

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