Following widespread criticism by social media users in Pakistan, Twitter on Tuesday restored the account of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) leader Manzoor Pashteen after a brief suspension.  

On Tuesday morning, visitors to Pashteen’s Twitter page were greeted with a generic message saying, “This account has been suspended.”

Pashteen, 26, has spent years drawing attention to the plight of the Pashtun people, especially those from Waziristan and other parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, Pakistan Today reported. 

Urging Twitter to overturn the suspension, Rabia Mehmood, an Amnesty South Asia Researcher asked, “Jack, why has twitter suspended account of a Pakistani civil rights movement’s leader?? He has been fighting for the just cause of demanding dignity and constitutional rights of his community. What can possibly be wrong with that?”

In the recent months, Pashteen has emerged as a rising champion of the Pashtun cause, while leading a fast-growing movement of thousands from Pakistan’s Pashtun minority— the country’s second-biggest ethnic group who form roughly 15 percent of the country’s 207 million people, according to Pakistan Today. 

This however comes at a time that some local media outlets in Pakistan, have over the past few weeks, also raised concerns over the censorship of their media outlets including a ban on programs of Pakistan’s famous GEO TV. 

According to local reports, Geo TV channel went off-air in up to 80 percent of the country from April 1. Journalists and activists took to social media platforms to protest against the move. 

At the time, a Geo TV journalist, Talat Hussain, said via his Twitter account that the news channel was not the only one to be pulled off air and that several other sub-divisions of the Geo group also went black. 

“This media gagging is not confined to Geo News only. All Geo channels are off in several areas. The story of ‘negotiations’ to ‘restore’ Geo for viewing is a long, fascinating & fearful one. Spreading over a year. Tells u how the system works. Its a new chapter in the history of media clampdown in Pakistan,” Talat (@TalatHussain12) wrote on Twitter.

“We are off the air in 80% of the country,” Mir Ibrahim Rahman, the chief executive of Geo network, told media without blaming anyone.

However, it is not clear why Twitter suspended Pashteen’s Twitter account, which appeared to have been down for a number of hours.