The shadow of the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and "death squads" looms large over the election process in Pakistan's Balochistan province but those most at threat are not even willing to name the forces that have virtually squeezed them out of the campaign.
With just a week to go till the landmark May 11 general election that will mark the first democratic transition of power in Pakistan's history, leaders of several parties in gas and mineral-rich Balochistan today said they have been forced to severely limit their campaign because of threats.
Ruqayya Saeed Hashmi, a PML-Q leader and a member of the minority Hazara community, said she had been receiving threats for the past few days because she is "a woman and a Shia" contesting polls to a parliamentary seat in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan.
Hazara Democratic Party general secretary Abdul Khaliq Hazara said his campaign had been limited to a few Hazara-dominated areas of Quetta, and that he was unable to woo ethnic Baloch, Punjabi and Pashtun voters.
"I narrowly escaped a bomb attack that occurred minutes after I addressed a street corner meeting on April 23. We are campaigning under the shadow of terror," Hazara told a group of foreign journalists visiting Quetta.
For the first time in years, the two Indian journalists posted in Pakistan were allowed to visit Balochistan.
Both Hashmi and Hazara were reluctant to name the elements threatening them and their election campaigns.
"I have been getting threatening letters and messages for the past two to three days. I am not going to mention who is behind these threats, it's not advisable for me to name them," said Hashmi.
"But everybody knows who's behind these threats," she said.
Hazara said there was a "banned organisation" that had claimed responsibility for killing hundreds of members of his community.
