Azaranica is a non-biased news aggregator on Hazaras. The main aim is to promote understanding and respect for cultural identities by highlighting the realities they face on daily basis...Hazaras have been the victim of active persecution and discrimination and one of the reasons among many has been the lack of information, awareness, and disinformation.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Coming to Australia


By LUKE HUNT


Allan Krepp/European Pressphoto AgencyThe jetty at Flying Fish Cove on Christmas Island. “More boats will come,” said Hasan Jafari, a Hazara who escaped persecution in Afghanistan for Australia. “It is better to die at sea trying to get here than to be killed in Afghanistan or Pakistan.”

MELBOURNE — A takeaway kebab shop in a leafy Australian suburb seems a far cry from the troubles of Afghanistan. But even here the anguish of war and centuries-old prejudices bite.

The sinking of another boat carrying asylum seekers from Afghanistan — almost 100 died last week in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait — has left the Hazara community here anxious and disturbed.

“More boats will come,” the 29-year-old Hasan Jafari forecasts from the relative comfort of the Doner Kebab Inn, a shop he opened two months ago amid the middle-class comforts of the suburb of Ormond. “It is better to die at sea trying to get here than to be killed in Afghanistan or Pakistan.”



Hazaras, a predominantly Shiite and Persian-speaking group, have a long history of being persecuted in Afghanistan at the hands of overwhelminglySunni rivals: Pashtuns, Tajiks and Turks. They have been landing on the northwestern coast of Australia in significant numbers since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

The number of Hazaras in Australia has swelled to approximately 50,000, about one-third of them arriving by boat, alongside non-Hazaras from Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka.....Continue Reading.... 

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