Pakistani politicians receive death threats

About 150 members of Pakistan’s parliament, provincial assemblies and senate have received anonymous text messages demanding that they resign or risk being killed, the interior minister said. Two suspects from Larkana district in Sindh province are being held over the threats, interior minister Rehman Malik told reporters on Saturday, after help from the cyber crime wing of the Federal Investigation Agency. “Threatening SMS were sent... asking them to resign or get killed,” Malik said. Pakistan is battling multiple insurgencies including Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked networks whose attacks are blamed for thousands of deaths in the past four years including those of several politicians. An MP from northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that he and colleagues regularly received such threats “by SMS and other means” but that he believed authorities dealt with them well. “It is a routine, we get so many threats, but our institutions are tackling this issue very well. Many culprits have been arrested in the past for sending threatening messages,” he said.