Pakistan Suspends Mobile Phone Services on Election Day Already Marred by Violence

Pakistan has suspended mobile phone services nationwide as voters in the world’s fifth most-populous nation head to the polls for a tumultuous general election that’s been marred by violence and questions of impropriety.

A statement from the Ministry of Interior posted on X Thursday morning said in Urdu that, in response to “recent incidents of terrorism” in the country, cellular networks had been cut off “to maintain the law and order situation and deal with possible threats.” (More than two dozen people were killed in a pair of bombings on candidates’ offices in the southwestern region of Balochistan on Wednesday; the Islamic State claimed responsibility for those attacks.)

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Global online freedom watchdog NetBlocks said it detected internet blackouts in multiple regions across the country and that the disruptions follow “months of digital censorship targeting the political opposition.”

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party lambasted the mobile service shutdown on X, calling it a “severe assault on democracy” and a “cowardly attempt by those in power to stifle dissent, manipulate the election’s outcome, and infringe upon the rights of the Pakistani people.” The party also urged people with WiFi to remove password protection on their personal network so that others in the vicinity could access the internet on polling day.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the Prime Minister candidate of the Pakistan People’s Party, urged on X that mobile phone services “be restored immediately across the country” and said his party would confront the Election Commission and the courts over the issue. The Interior ministry said the suspension of services would be temporary but did not say when it would be lifted.

Polls opened at 8 a.m. local time, and are set to close at 5 p.m. (7 a.m. Eastern). The Election Commission said in a press release hours after the mobile services suspension that its monitoring remains fully operational and that the polling process is “going on peacefully” with “no complaints from anywhere.”

But that did not last long, as local police reported attacks in various parts of the country, according to the Associated Press. At least five officers and a soldier were killed in two separate attacks in Dera Ismail Khan and Kot Azam, where suspected Pakistani Taliban gunmen fired at a police van and at troops, respectively. Meanwhile, unidentified attackers threw grenades at polling stations in Balochistan, where the previous day’s deadly Islamic State blasts occurred, causing panic but no injuries, per the AP.

Some 128 million Pakistanis are registered to vote, and about 650,000 security personnel were deployed to try to ensure a peaceful process, with the country also closing its borders with Iran and Afghanistan as an added security measure. But violence aside, the election was already hardly free or fair.

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Pakistan’s most popular politician, former Prime Minister Imran Khan, has been jailed and barred from the ballot, and his PTI party has been systematically cracked down on by the country’s military kingmakers, paving the way for an expected victory for former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The election comes at a critical time for the South Asian country of some 243 million people, which on top of its political unrest struggles with an ongoing economic crisis. Results are expected Friday.