Afghans condemn Hazara killings in Pakistan

Hundreds stage rally in Kabul demanding end to deadly attacks on minority ethnic group in Balochistan province.

Last Modified: 04 May 2012 19:13



Protesters say there has been a surge in the killings of Hazara Shia in Balochistan province [AFP]


Hundreds of Hazara Shia have taken to the streets of the Afghan capital, Kabul, to protest against what they call thetargeted killings of members of their minority group in neighbouring Pakistan.

Protesters, numbering about 400, hoisted placards reading "Death to Terrorism" and "Shame, Shame Pakistan" on Friday as they called on Pakistan to protect members of the ethnic group after dozens of Shia were killed in the southwestern province of Balochistan in the past few months.

Speaking to the Reuters news agency, Fatima Jahfari, a female protester, asked when the killing of Hazara would stop.

"Until when will being a Hazara be a crime? Until when will we be told that because we are Hazara, we have to be martyred and until when will we be martyred because we are Shia?" she said.

Kazim Waheedi, organiser of the protest, said the killing of Hazaras in Pakistan was on the rise.

"In the past two months ,150 Hazaras have been killed, which shows a huge increase. And the reason of our
gathering is against this inhuman action by Pakistan," Waheedi, a medical doctor and activist, said.

The heavily guarded demonstration was blocked by Afghan police officers from reaching the Pakistani embassy in Kabul.

Friday's protests come weeks after other similar rallies in major world cities, including protests last month in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, where a tight-knit community of about 500,000 Hazara Shia live.

Violence against Shia in Afghanistan has been fairly rare since the ousting of the Taliban from power in 2001, but more common in Pakistan, where many Afghans have migrated during the decades of war in the Central Asian nation.

A Pakistani embassy official in Kabul dismissed criticism that Hazaras or other Shia were being neglected.

In a sign of growing worries about security, protesters on Friday divided into three groups to avoid possible attacks like a series of blasts in December, 2011, on Shia ceremonies in Kabul and two other areas that killed scores.

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May 2, 2012

Una Moore

Category: Rights

Topics: Hazaras, Pakistan

Yesterday, our own Ahmad Shuja was a guest on Al Jazeera’s The Stream, where he discussed the violent persecution of the Hazaras, an ethnic and religious –Shia– minority group in Pakistan.

The Hazara people, who originate from Afghanistan and historically formed an ethnic underclass in that country, have lived peacefully in neighboring Pakistan for centuries. But over the past decade, at least 500 of Hazara civilians have been killed and hundreds more have been injured in targeted ethno-sectarian attacks the city of Quetta. The violence has trapped one of South Asia’s most vulnerable populations between the conflict and uncertainty in Afghanistan and the growing anti-Shia movement in Pakistan, a country many Hazaras previously considered a safe haven.

Pakistani militant groups and extremist political parties have openly called for the expulsion of the Hazaras and other non-Sunni minorities from Pakistan, and have even set “deadlines” for Quetta’s half million Hazaras to leave or face extermination. Over the past year alone, dozens of Hazaras have been killed. Anti-Shia militants have targeted members of the group in suicide bombings, rocket attacks, assassination campaigns, and execution-style massacres of whole groups of laborers traveling on buses.

Since the violence began escalating, the Pakistani authorities have refused to take measures to protect the embattled minority and some officials have even suggested that the Hazaras are kicking up a fuss over nothing. After 47 Hazaras were killed in an attack on a bus last year, the Chief Minister of Baluchistan, where Quetta is located, told the local press that Quetta’s Hazaras were shedding “sorry tears” and joked that his response to the massacre would be to send a “truckload of tissues” to the victims’ families.

On The Stream, host Imran Garda spoke with Ahmad and two Hazara political leaders in Pakistan about the humanitarian toll the violence has taken on the Hazara community and what Pakistan’s Hazaras want from the government that has so far ignored their pleas for protection.

UN Dispatch