Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Hazara Shias left to mourn another 13 in Balochistan
Shahzada Zulfiqar
Hazara Shias mourn killing of their community members on Tuesday. AFP
Gunmen open indiscriminate fire on minibus carrying several Hazara Shias in Quetta
QUETTA - Tragedy again visited the Hazara community on Tuesday when 13 members of the religious minority and a Sunni man were barbarically gunned down in the outskirts of the provincial capital on Tuesday.
This was the third such attack targeting Hazara Shias in a month. A similar attack on a bus in Mastung on September 20 killed at least 26 Hazara Shia pilgrims while they were on their way to Iran, while three Hazaras were killed in Machh on September 23 in an attack on a passenger van. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack although the previous attacks were claimed by the banned Sunni militant organisation, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
Per details, a group of Hazara Shias were travelling within Quetta, from Brewery to the Hazar Gunji area, along the Western Bypass in a mini bus when a pickup truck carrying armed men intercepted it. The gunmen then opened indiscriminate fire on the vehicle, killing five people on the spot. The dead and injured were rushed to the nearby Bolan Medical Complex in the very bus they were attacked, but nine of the injured died on the way and at the hospital. Those critically injured were later moved to Combined Military Hospital. One of the dead was a Sunni who also came under fire.
“Four or five armed men in a double-cabin pickup forced the bus to a halt and opened indiscriminate fire,” said DIG (operations) Hamid Shakeel. He said a police party was escorting a pickup of a group of Shia vegetable traders in the area and they had been taken to safety after the attack. He said if any group or individual belonging to the Shia community informed police about their movement, police provided them adequate escort due to the prevailing security situation. Shakeel said like the Shia pilgrims killed in Mastung, the commuters had not informed police of their movement.
Police Chief Ahsan Mahboob placed Brewery Station House Officer Wahid Bakhsh under suspension for his failure to provide security to the group of Shia travellers. Angered by the killing, hundreds of Shias reached Bolan Medical Complex and set the bus carrying the men on fire. The protesters blocked the Brewery Road and Western Bypass for vehicular traffic for hours and chanted slogans against the government. A group of around 200 female students of Government Girls College Cantt also staged a rally outside their college against the killing.
Later, a joint funeral was held in Hazara town graveyard for the deceased. “Our government, our law enforcement agencies have left us at the mercy of these barbarians,” Abdul Khaliq, a leader of the Hazara Democratic Party, told a private TV channel. London-based Amnesty International said the killings highlighted the failure of Pakistani authorities to address sectarian violence across the country. “These are not random killings but demonstrate the deliberate targeting of the Shias by armed groups,” said Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi.
Pakistan Today
Gunmen open indiscriminate fire on minibus carrying several Hazara Shias in Quetta
QUETTA - Tragedy again visited the Hazara community on Tuesday when 13 members of the religious minority and a Sunni man were barbarically gunned down in the outskirts of the provincial capital on Tuesday.
This was the third such attack targeting Hazara Shias in a month. A similar attack on a bus in Mastung on September 20 killed at least 26 Hazara Shia pilgrims while they were on their way to Iran, while three Hazaras were killed in Machh on September 23 in an attack on a passenger van. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack although the previous attacks were claimed by the banned Sunni militant organisation, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
Per details, a group of Hazara Shias were travelling within Quetta, from Brewery to the Hazar Gunji area, along the Western Bypass in a mini bus when a pickup truck carrying armed men intercepted it. The gunmen then opened indiscriminate fire on the vehicle, killing five people on the spot. The dead and injured were rushed to the nearby Bolan Medical Complex in the very bus they were attacked, but nine of the injured died on the way and at the hospital. Those critically injured were later moved to Combined Military Hospital. One of the dead was a Sunni who also came under fire.
“Four or five armed men in a double-cabin pickup forced the bus to a halt and opened indiscriminate fire,” said DIG (operations) Hamid Shakeel. He said a police party was escorting a pickup of a group of Shia vegetable traders in the area and they had been taken to safety after the attack. He said if any group or individual belonging to the Shia community informed police about their movement, police provided them adequate escort due to the prevailing security situation. Shakeel said like the Shia pilgrims killed in Mastung, the commuters had not informed police of their movement.
Police Chief Ahsan Mahboob placed Brewery Station House Officer Wahid Bakhsh under suspension for his failure to provide security to the group of Shia travellers. Angered by the killing, hundreds of Shias reached Bolan Medical Complex and set the bus carrying the men on fire. The protesters blocked the Brewery Road and Western Bypass for vehicular traffic for hours and chanted slogans against the government. A group of around 200 female students of Government Girls College Cantt also staged a rally outside their college against the killing.
Later, a joint funeral was held in Hazara town graveyard for the deceased. “Our government, our law enforcement agencies have left us at the mercy of these barbarians,” Abdul Khaliq, a leader of the Hazara Democratic Party, told a private TV channel. London-based Amnesty International said the killings highlighted the failure of Pakistani authorities to address sectarian violence across the country. “These are not random killings but demonstrate the deliberate targeting of the Shias by armed groups,” said Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi.
Pakistan Today
Attack on Hazaras: Politicians demand state protect Shia community
Published: October 4, 2011
Relatives of the victims of Akhtarabad bus attack prepare the funerals. PHOTO: BANARAS KHAN/EXPRESS
Politicians including Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan and Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain condemned the target killing of 14 ethnic Hazaras in Quetta today (Tuesday).
They labelled the murder of the Hazaras as sectarian terrorism that needs to be curbed.
Khan, in a press release issued from his party office said that the responsibility for these deaths fell squarely on the current corrupt government who had failed in its duty to protect its citizens.
He said that due to this attitude of the government, the integrity of the state had been put in jeopardy.
MQM, in its released statement said that the state must prosecute the elements responsible for this heinous act.
They demanded that the state should take notice of the killing and take steps to ensure the protection of the people.
The Express Tribune
Politicians including Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan and Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain condemned the target killing of 14 ethnic Hazaras in Quetta today (Tuesday).
They labelled the murder of the Hazaras as sectarian terrorism that needs to be curbed.
Khan, in a press release issued from his party office said that the responsibility for these deaths fell squarely on the current corrupt government who had failed in its duty to protect its citizens.
He said that due to this attitude of the government, the integrity of the state had been put in jeopardy.
MQM, in its released statement said that the state must prosecute the elements responsible for this heinous act.
They demanded that the state should take notice of the killing and take steps to ensure the protection of the people.
The Express Tribune
Pakistan's Tiny Hazara Minority Struggles To Survive
October 04, 2011
By Abubakar Siddique, Khudainoor Nasar
QUETTA, Pakistan -- A deadly attack in southwest Pakistan has added to the heavy toll suffered by a small Shi'ite minority amid a broad sectarian conflict.
The October 4 attack, carried out against a bus carrying mostly Hazaras on the outskirts of Quetta, claimed the lives of 12 people. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but similar attacks against the community have previously been claimed by Sunnis affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Thousands have died in the ongoing conflict between rival hard-line Shi'a and Sunni sects in Pakistan, but the Hazaras have particularly suffered. The minority has been left reeling from a sharp increase in attacks in recent years, prompting some members to call on the government to provide more land to accommodate fresh graves.
Obtaining justice in the Sunni-majority state has proved elusive for some Hazaras like Rukhsana Ahmed Ali, a prominent political activist and social worker whose husband, Ahmed Ali Najafi, was killed at his workplace two years ago.
She says two eyewitnesses, young students of a religious seminary, said they heard the killers order her husband out of his car and asking them how he had wronged them.
"The killers then told him, 'You have not done anything wrong, but we have been told that killing one Shi'a will open five doors of heaven for us,'" Ahmed Ali says. "He was then forced out of his car and killed by a whole burst of Kalashnikov fire."
'Are We Humans Or Insects?'
Najafi's September 2009 killing marked the beginning of bloodshed against Hazaras centered in Balochistan Province that has continued to this day. Hazara leaders claim that nearly 600 members of their community have been killed since 1999.
Lashkar-e Jhangvi, a banned extremist Sunni organization now seen as allied with Al-Qaeda, has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks.
Middle-aged coal-mine owner Sayed Nasir Ali Shah represents Quetta's Hazara's in the Pakistani parliament. He was elected on the ticket of the governing Pakistan People's Party in 2008, but has since turned into one of its most outspoken critics. These days, his only mission is to try to save Hazara lives by calling for government protection.
Shah was undeterred even when he was targeted in a suicide attack last year, which left one of his young sons paralyzed. He says that protests and petitions with senior leaders have so far fallen on deaf ears.
"The government is only watching, and I am now tired after constantly shouting to grab their attention," Shah says. "I have been pleading to them to [do something to protect us] for God's sake. Are we humans or insects? We have no confrontation with our [neighboring] Balochi and Pashtun communities. We are targeted because our tormentors believe that we are infidels."
Losing Battle
A century ago, Shah's Hazara ancestors fled the poverty and oppression of their Afghan homeland to the safety offered by Quetta, a British garrison town. Compared to their Afghan cousins, the Hazaras in Quetta prospered in British India and later on in Pakistan. But the tiny minority turned into a target for radical Sunnis.
Quetta once led the rest of Pakistan as an example of interfaith harmony. But Sunni extremism gradually gained traction in Balochistan's secular political culture and changed the landscape of its capital. This transformation was aided by Pakistan's alliance with radical Islamists who have fought its proxy wars in neighboring Afghanistan since the 1980s.
Abdul Khaliq Hazara, chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party, says the government has abdicated its responsibility of protecting his community. The small political party he leads hopes to provide protection to Quetta's 400,000 Hazaras by relentlessly advocating their rights.
He now sees no light at the end of the tunnel, and laments that many youths in the community are opting to seek asylum abroad.
"Nobody is listening to us -- the parliament, Islamabad, the government in Balochistan, and our powerful [security] institutions," Khaliz Hazara says. "We feel that it's the government's policy to promote sectarian terrorism here. So that people keep on fighting each other because of sectarian tensions."
Balochistan, Pakistan's largest and least populated province, is the scene of complex regional rivalries and home to many insurgent movements. The province has been destabilized by a separatist ethnic Balochi insurgency since 2004 that Islamabad is trying to crush militarily.
Insurgents' Foothold?
Afghan and Western officials, however, are more concerned about the presence of Afghan insurgents in Balochistan. They blame Pakistan for sheltering the leadership of Afghan Taliban movement in Quetta.
Police officials claim that the security environment in Balochistan is stretching their small force. Hamid Shakeel, a senior police officer in Quetta, says they always urge Hazaras traveling from Quetta to request police protection before embarking outside the provincial capital, often en route to Iran.
But there is only so much they can do, Shakeel says. "We only have 1,100 police officers for Quetta and their responsibility is not only to prevent target assassinations but they have to provide protection to senior officials," he says.
The situation prompted the Hazaras of Quetta to call for international protests this month. The Hazara Democratic Party is counting on Hazara diaspora communities to demonstrate in major cities across Europe, Australia, and North America throughout October. A protest in Vienna on October 1 attracted hundreds of supporters, and the October 4 bloodshed prompted hundreds more to condemn the killings during a rally in London.
Back in Quetta, fear and uncertainty remain high. Muhammad Ismail, a Harzara trader, says that living a normal life in his once peaceful hometown is now impossible.
"When we leave our houses [in the morning] we are not sure about returning in the evening," Ismail says. "When our children go out into the bazaar, we are worried about something happening to them. These are the kind of problems we live with."
Radio Liberty (Radio Free Europe)
Football: Quetta killings cancel PPFL tie
Published: October 4, 2011
Pel refused to travel to Chaman as six of their players belong to the Hazara region.
KARACHI: The massacre of 13 men belonging to the Hazara community in Quetta led to the cancellation of the Pakistan Premier Football League match in Chaman as Pel decided to skip their fixture against Muslim FC.
Pel refused to travel to Chaman as six of their players belong to the Hazara region. However, match commissioner Mohammad Samad insisted that the security situation in Chaman was fine. “The security situation is under control in Chaman although the teams are still wary of coming here,” Samad told The Express Tribune. “As an official, I can confidently say that Chaman is safe and the last match went smoothly.” The development meant that Muslim FC got a walk-over against Pel. They now lie sixth in the league with 20 points, while Pel languish at the bottom of the table with only six points.
Meanwhile, NBP defeated PIA 2-0 while PMC Athletico and PAF were involved in a goal-less draw.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 5th, 2011.
KARACHI: The massacre of 13 men belonging to the Hazara community in Quetta led to the cancellation of the Pakistan Premier Football League match in Chaman as Pel decided to skip their fixture against Muslim FC.
Pel refused to travel to Chaman as six of their players belong to the Hazara region. However, match commissioner Mohammad Samad insisted that the security situation in Chaman was fine. “The security situation is under control in Chaman although the teams are still wary of coming here,” Samad told The Express Tribune. “As an official, I can confidently say that Chaman is safe and the last match went smoothly.” The development meant that Muslim FC got a walk-over against Pel. They now lie sixth in the league with 20 points, while Pel languish at the bottom of the table with only six points.
Meanwhile, NBP defeated PIA 2-0 while PMC Athletico and PAF were involved in a goal-less draw.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 5th, 2011.
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