Three more Hazaras killed in Quetta

our correspondent
Friday, August 17, 2012
From Print Edition

QUETTA: In a fresh wave of target killings, three persons were killed in the provincial capital after unknown armed men attacked an auto-rickshaw at the Arbab Karam Khan Road on Thursday.

Police said unidentified armed men, riding a motorcycle, attacked an auto-rickshaw in which three persons were travelling from the Quetta city to Hazara Town. The attackers opened indiscriminate fire from automatic weapons, killing all of them. The victims belonged to the Hazara community. The deceased were identified as Ghulam Husain, Abdul Ali and the rickshaw driver Qurban Ali. The armed men made their escape from the scene.

Officials of police and rescue teams reached the spot on information and shifted the bodies to the Civil Hospital. The people from Hazara community thronged the hospital, staged protest and demanded of the government to step down, saying the incident proved a failure of the government.

Moving scenes were witnessed in the hospital when bodies of the deceased were being handed over to the heirs.Meanwhile, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) strongly condemned the killings and held the provincial government responsible for the deaths.

A spokesman for the PkMAP said in a statement issued to the press that target killings, terrorism, kidnapping for ransom had become a matter of routine in Balochistan, while the government was oblivious of the gravity of the situation.

He observed that the government had failed in providing security to citizens and demanded of the government to step down in the larger interest of the province.APP adds: The police, soon after the incident, cordoned off the entire area and started a search operation.

The News 

Three gunned down in Quetta

Agencies


Police sources said that it appeared that these were targeted killings.—File Photo

QUETTA: As many as three persons have been killed in an incident of firing in Balochistan’s provincial capital of Quetta on Thursday.

Gunmen on a motorcycle pulled three people from a rickshaw and opened fire on them.

“Unknown armed men riding bike opened fire on a vehicle at Arbab Karam Khan road area, leaving three person in the vehicle seriously injured,” police said adding that the wounded succumbed to their injuries on way to the hospital.

Nobody immediately claimed the responsibility for the killings which took place at Arbab Karam Khan Road, a middle-class neighbourhood of Quetta, said police official Noor Baksh.

Police sources said that it appeared that these were targeted killings.

DAWN

کوئٹہ: ارباب کرم خان روڈ پر فائرنگ، 3 افراد جاں بحق

August 16, 2012 - Updated 1730 PKT

کوئٹہ … کوئٹہ میں نامعلوم افراد کی فائرنگ سے 3 افراد جاں بحق ہوگئے۔ ذرائع کے مطابق کوئٹہ کے علاقے ارباب کرم خان روڈ پر نامعلوم افراد نے فائرنگ کردی جس کے نتیجے میں 3 افرا جاں بحق ہوگئے۔ واقعے کے بعد پولیس اور امدادی ٹیمیں 

جائے وقوعہ پر پہنچ گئیں۔امدادی کارروائیاں شرو ع کردی گئیں ہیں جبکہ پولیس واقعے سے متعلق تفتیش کررہی ہے

Geo  TV


کوئٹہ میں نامعلوم افراد نے تین افراد کو رکشے سے اتار کر قتل کردیا اور فرار ہوگئے۔

پولیس کے مطابق ارباب کرم خان روڈ پر فاروق ملز کے قریب موٹر سائیکل سوار نامعلوم افراد نے ایک رکشہ کو اسلحہ کے زور پر روکا اور اس میں سوار تین افراد کو اتار کر ان پر اندھا دھند فائرنگ کردی جس کے نتیجے میں تینوں افراد موقع پر ہی جاں بحق ہوگئے ۔ ملزمان واردات کے بعد فرار ہوگئے ۔ عینی شاہدین کے مطابق مقتولین کی لاشیں پولیس کے آنے تک سڑک پر پڑی رہیں ، پولیس نے موقع پر پہنچ کر لاشوں کو سول اسپتال منتقل کیا جہاں دو افراد کی شناخت خادم حسین اور عبدال علی کے نام سے ہوگئی۔ پولیس کے مطابق جاں بحق افراد کا تعلق ہزارہ قبیلے سے ہے اور واقعہ ٹارگٹ کلنگ کا نتیجہ ہے ۔

Afghan Olympians return to cheers in Kabul

سوء قصد به جان استاد خلیلی از سوی شبکه حقانی

Rohullah's Story - Afghanistan - Olympic 2012

Their greatest risk remains their greatest hope

DateAugust 15, 2012

Michael Bachelard, West Java

AS AUSTRALIANS were digesting their country's latest policy twist on Monday night, a group of Afghan asylum seekers clustered anxiously around their computer in West Java, devouring the news.

The tough new policy is designed to deter men such as these ethnic Hazaras from trying to reach Australia. But they insisted to The Age yesterday that they were still determined to board a boat and make the hazardous trip.

''When you think that you may die in Afghanistan, there are two ways,'' refugee Mohamad Khani said. ''You stay there and die [or] you can go to find a safe place to have a better future … We are going [to Australia]. We don't have another choice.''


Hazaras in West Java. Photo: Michael Bachelard

Eighty men live cheek by jowl in this compound of eight rooms in the picturesque town of Cisarua. They are part of a constantly shifting population of Hazara refugees waiting for the call from a people smuggler to say their boat is ready.
Advertisement

They are avid consumers of Australian news because Australia is their greatest risk and their greatest hope. But these men were clear: they had come too far on their journey to Australia to back out now, however harsh the government's policy.

In his 22 years, Mr Khani has felt almost constantly under threat. In Afghanistan, his father was kidnapped by the Taliban for lacking a beard. He escaped and the family fled to Pakistan.

There the family were unable to work or study. Mr Khani's cousin was killed there, and they were hounded by extremist bombers and the police.

Mr Khani moved back to Afghanistan to work as an electrician. But he said the Taliban were resurgent and Hazaras trying to earn a living were a target.

''They are simple people in the daytime, but at night they are Taliban … with guns, searching people and questioning people."

He finally became an asylum seeker two weeks ago because he believes that when the international military forces leave Afghanistan in 2014, ''our problems will become more''.

Although the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has records of about 4000 asylum seekers in Indonesia, some estimate there are as many as 10,000 seeking passage to Australia. However, the Hazaras were less certain about whether the new policy would deter their countrymen from leaving Afghanistan. Mr Khani said some might now consider seeking asylum in North America or Europe.

Sayed Rahmatullah Alemzadeh Haiz, a former journalist, said the prospect of long detention on Nauru or Manus Island would not deter the group.

''If the Australian government takes me to a detention centre, they will not kill me. But if I go to the Taliban, I'm sure they will kill me,'' he said.

Ali Reza, 17, found his way to Cisarua via Thailand and Malaysia, and then spent five months in the Tanjung Pinang detention centre in Indonesia - an experience he said was more like prison.

He said his father was killed by the Taliban, so he was the breadwinner for his mother and two brothers in Afghanistan, making him desperate to get to Australia.

He rejected the prospect of waiting, perhaps for years, in the so-called queue for a legitimate visa. ''If I wait, it will kill me by waiting. You can get anything, but you can't get your time again,'' he said.

All these men have an idealised view of Australia as a large, friendly, open country whose people do not recognise the word ''Hazara'' as an insult. But they are also keen for information about Nauru and Manus Island, and how long they might need to spend there.

Ultimately, they seem resolved. Even the new policy was better than what they had come from, they said.

''When you are waking in the morning, you don't know if you'll go back home at night or not,'' Mr Khani said. ''I cannot describe this … you see people, they look like dead bodies. They have no hope.''

 SMH