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....
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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