KUALA LUMPUR: PAS has removed all congratulatory posts to the Taliban-led government of Afghanistan to avoid the party from being blocked on social media sites, says its International Affairs and Foreign Relations committee.
Its secretary Khidhir Izaidin said the Islamist party's previous post was removed by Facebook for not following the social media site's community standards.
"In this regard, we decided to remove all our posts on our social media platforms to avoid being blocked by other social media sites," he said in a statement on Friday (Aug 18).
In a now-deleted tweet, Muhammad Khalil Abdul Hadi, who is PAS' International Affairs and Foreign Relations committee chairman and Terengganu assemblyman, took to Twitter to "congratulate the people of Afghanistan and the Taliban-led government for their victory".
His "congratulatory message" has since drawn flak on social media, many of whom questioned if PAS was supporting the Taliban.
Khidhir said the committee will soon organise a programme related to Afghanistan, and will announce it at the earliest time.
"We also like to thank all parties and the media for your cooperation," added Khidhir.
The Talibans are trying to consolidate power after seizing control of Afghanistan in just over a week and driving President Ashraf Ghani and most senior government officials into exile.
Facebook and TikTok have said they would continue to ban content promoting the Taliban after the movement took control of Afghanistan, Sputnik quoted the CNBC report citing the statement by the social media giants.
"We have banned the Taliban from our services under our Dangerous Organisation policies," Facebook stated as quoted by CNBC.
The Taliban has been banned from Facebook for several years, with all accounts maintained on behalf of the Taliban removed.
A special team of Afghan nationals are working with Facebook to facilitate the identification of accounts glorifying the group, the Facebook representative added.
TikTok also said it would continue removing content promoting the Taliban.