Two gunned down in Quetta

December 13, 2012, 6:27 pm



At least two persons were gunned down while one sustained severe injuries in separate target killing incidents on Thursday.

In the area of Jinnah road some unknown armed persons opened unprovoked firing on shopkeeper Shabir Hussain resultantly he died on the spot.

In second incident some unknown armed personals opened indiscriminate firing on shops as a result the shopkeeper namely Gul Shereen died on the spot.

In another incident, some unknown armed personals opened firing on Taj Muhammad khan resultantly he sustained severe injuries in the area of Quandari Bazar and the criminals fled away from the scene successfully.

On getting information police reached on the spot and shifted the dead bodies to hospital for autopsy.

After completing legal formalities the dead bodies were handed over to his heirs.

Police claimed that the incident is the result of discrimination target killings.

Police registered the case and started thorough investigation of the case.

The Nation 

Doctor shot dead in Mastung; two others gunned down in Quetta

DawnNews



In the most recent incident, unidentified gunmen shot dead renowned local doctor Lakhmi Chand in Balochistan’s Mastung district, about 25 kilometres south of Quetta.—File Photo

QUETTA: At least three people were killed and three others injured in a series of shooting incidents on Thursday in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province.

Three separate shooting incidents in the span of an hour claimed two lives and injured three other people in Quetta, the provincial capital.

According to police, the first incident took place at the city’s busy market Qandahari Bazar when unknown gunmen riding motorcycles opened fire, severely injuring three people. At least two of the three injured were identified as locals belonging to the minority Hazara community.

In a similar incident, another man, said to be a public servant and also belonging to the Hazara community, was gunned down by unidentified armed assailants.

Meanwhile, another man lost his life when gunmen opened fire at a tailor shop at Sarki Road.

In the most recent incident, unidentified gunmen shot dead renowned local doctor Lakhmi Chand in Balochistan’s Mastung district, about 25 kilometres south of Quetta.

Earlier on Thursday, a local court sentenced to life imprisonment three suspects for the murder of Baloch leader Habib Jalib Baloch. The sentence was handed down by sessions judge Rashid Mehmood.

Habib Jalib Baloch, a former senator and secretary-general of the Balochistan National Party-M, wasassassinated on Quetta’s Sariab Road in July 2010.

DAWN 

Australia’s Deadly Game

The face of an assassinated asylum seeker: Ali Shah tried to escape Pakistan’s sectarian violence and come to Australia, but he was murdered en route.

By Aubrey BelfordDecember 12, 2012

The Global Mail investigates how Australian authorities are co-operating with corrupt local authorities who bend the law to keep would-be refugees trapped in a country that they desperately want to escape.

Ali Shah was not meant to die in Pakistan. He should have already been out of the country, somewhere on the long smugglers’ route to safety in Australia.

But a bullet got to him first.

Shah was a 28-year-old from Quetta, a restive city near the Afghan border, haunted by Sunni Muslim death squads that are allied to the Taliban and which kill with near total impunity. As a Shia and a policeman, Shah was automatically in danger. As a Hazara — a Shia minority with east-Asian features distinct from surrounding ethnic groups — his face betrayed him.

Early this year, Shah paid $6,000 to smugglers, who would fly him legally to Thailand and then smuggle him over land and sea to Indonesia; once there he would search for another smuggler with a boat to Australia.

“Definitely they do have a profiling... There’s no strictly legal regime for this.”
− AZAD KHAN, PAKISTAN’S FEDERAL INVESTIGATION AGENCY

He travelled first to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and waited with five other Hazara men for a flight to Bangkok. But this plan was foiled when the smuggler returned to the men who were waiting in Islamabad, and told them the way would be blocked: airport officers would not let the men board unless they paid a hefty extra bribe to pass through. The smuggler suggested the men travel by train to Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, where a cheaper pay-off at the airport could be arranged.

At about 1.30am on April 4, the Hazara group arrived by rail in Karachi, and began to wander the streets in search of a hotel. Suddenly two men, their faces covered, pulled up on a motorbike and opened fire. Shah dropped to the ground, mortally wounded. Another man, Ismat Ullah, was shot through the leg.

Ullah watched as the men rifled through Shah’s clothes, stealing money and a phone. As they sped off, Ullah recalls, the attackers gave a clue to their motivations, yelling out “Shia are infidels!”

Months later Ullah, 25, is back in Quetta and still injured. But he says he wants to try the trip to Australia again.... Continue Reading... 

For Some, Quetta Is A Deadly Prison

BANARAS KHAN/AFP/GETTY
Billboard warning asylum seekers against taking “illegal routes to Australia” looms over the scene of a 2010 suicide bombing in Quetta.

By Aubrey Belford

Once a haven for refugees from Afghanistan, the Pakistani city of Quetta has turned into a deathtrap. Many see escape to Australia as their only hope.

For years, the Pakistani city of Quetta has been studded with billboards put up by Australia.

When a suicide bomber detonated himself in a Shia Muslim rally on September 3, 2010, killing more than 70 people, photographs of the carnage showed one of these signs in the background. Behind the welter of torn bodies, black smoke and sheared metal, the message was clearly visible: “All illegal routes to Australia are closed to Afghans.”

This city near Afghanistan has long been a transit point for would-be asylum seekers from across the border, many of them Shia Muslim ethnic Hazaras. The Afghans would enter, make contact with smugglers and arrange documents, and head on to Australia. Many of those in transit would stay with relatives among the half-million-strong local community of Hazaras who have settled in the city over more than a century — seeking refuge from waves of massacres and oppression in Afghanistan.

But Quetta is no longer a haven. Recent years have seen a dramatic rise in the killing of Hazaras and other Shias by the extremist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which is allied to the Taliban. The killers, who often strike in the daytime and brazenly leave their faces exposed, carry out their work with little hindrance from the authorities. Some allege they have state support.

Quetta has now become a place that Hazaras are desperate to leave.... Continue Reading.... 

Worry Grows Over Rising Sectarian Attacks In Pakistan

Shi'ite Muslims shout slogans as they carry coffins of co-religionists during a funeral ceremony in Quetta. (file photo)

By VOA's Ayaz Gul

December 11, 2012
Sunni-dominated Pakistan has seen an unprecedented spike in religious violence this year, with at least 375 minority Shi'ite Muslims killed across the country.

Government critics say the violent conflict is likely to intensify if authorities do not do more to improve local governance and punish those who carry out sectarian attacks.

Sectarian bloodshed in Pakistan had peaked in the 1990s, and the violence subsided after the country joined with the U.S.-led coalition 10 years ago to fight terrorist and extremist groups.

Under pressure from the United States and other allies, Pakistan banned several Shi'ite and Sunni militant groups for having links to Al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan.

But sectarian violence has returned this year with targeted attacks on Shi'ite Muslims. Official figures indicate that since the start of 2012, at least 134 people have died in sectarian attacks in Balochistan, mostly in the provincial capital, Quetta. Nearly all of those killed were Shi'ite Muslims and a majority of those were members of the Hazara community, a Persian-speaking Shi'ite population that immigrated to Pakistan from neighboring Afghanistan more than a century ago.

Community leaders say the growing sense of insecurity has forced thousands of young Hazaras to turn to human smugglers and try to reach countries like Australia by undertaking an expensive and dangerous journey across the Indian Ocean.

Abdul Khaliq Hazara, a senior Hazara activist in Quetta, says that the journey in small boats has already taken hundreds of lives and those who survived have ended up in jails abroad. He says that sectarian attacks have become routine in the city but authorities have so far not made a single arrest.

"The [Pakistani] government and law enforcement agencies, they do not pursue them [attackers], and they openly do whatever they want; and after that we don’t know where they vanish and where they go," Hazara says. "That is why I think the [Hazara] people prefer [to emigrate]. Many of them have migrated because their life, education, their business, their property, it is not safe."...Continue Reading...

Cop injured in Quetta firing dies

December 11, 2012 - Updated 2336 PKT
From Web Edition


QUETTA: A police constable who was injured in firing in the provincial capital one week ago died in Combined Military Hospital on Tuesday.

Police sources said that unknown armed men riding bike had opened indiscriminate fire at police constable Altaf and his brother Ashfaq near Askari Park Quetta, due to which Ashfaq was killed on the spot while Altaf received serious bullet wounds and was rushed to CMH for treatment.

The body of the deceased has been handed over to the heirs. He belonged to local Hazara community.

The police had already registered a case against unknown suspects and investigation into the incident was underway. (APP)

The News 

عالمی طاقتیں ، بین الاقوامی کمپنیاں اپنے مفادات کی جنگ کیلئے بلوچستان کو جنگ کے میدان میں تبدیل کرنا چاہتے ہیں،عبد الخالق ہزارہ

December 10, 2012 | Filed underآس پاس | Posted by dailyqudrat

کوئٹہ (قدرت نیوز ہزارہ ڈیموکریٹک پارٹی کے چئیرمین عبد الخالق ہزارہ نے اسلام آباد میں ادارہ استحکام شرکتی ترقی کے زیر اہتمام منعقدہ کانفرنس سے خطاب کرتے ہوئے ہزارہ قوم کی نسل کشی کے اسباب و عوامل پر تفصیلی روشنی ڈالتے ہوئے کہا کہ خطے میں بلوچستان کی خصوصی اہمیت کے پیش نظر عالمی طاقتیں ، بین الاقوامی کمپنیاں اپنے مفادات کی جنگ کیلئے بلوچستان کو جنگ کے میدان میں تبدیل کرنا چاہتے ہیں۔ اس مقصد کیلئے ہر قوت نے اپنی الگ پراکسی تشکیل دے رکھی ہیں جو صوبے میں عقیدہ مسلک اور فرقہ کی بنیاد پر بین الاقوامی قوتوں کے مفادات کیلئے بے گناہ انسانوں ، خصوصاً ہزارہ قوم کے قتل عام میں ملوث ہیں۔ انہوں نے حالات کی خرابی میں بعض اسلامی ممالک کو بھی ذمہ دار قرار دیتے ہوئے کہا کہ ملک کے کمزور خارجہ پالیسی کی وجہ سے اختلافات رکھنے والے مسلم ممالک نے بھی اپنا مرکز جنگ کوئٹہ اور بلوچستان کو بنا رکھا ہے ۔ حالانکہ وزرات خارجہ اور داخلہ دونوں کے علم میں یہ بات روز روشن کی طرح اپنی پوری حقیقت کے ساتھ موجود ہے مگر کمزور انتظامی و سیاسی ڈھانچے کی وجہ سے ہماری وزراتیں ان ممالک سے احتجاج بھی نہیں کرسکتی فرقہ واریت کے نام پر بے گناہ نوجوانوں اور ہزارہ قوم کے فرزندوں کا خون بہانے والی قوتوں کو کڑوڑوں روپے کے خارجی امداد موصول ہورہے ہیں جن سے وہ نہ صرف جدید اسلحہ کی خریداری کر لیتے ہیں بلکہ بھاری رقوم خرچ کرکے سرکاری اداروں کے ضمیر فروش افراد کو بھی اپنے ساتھ ملا لیتے ہیں ۔ پارٹی رہنما کا کہنا تھا کہ 800 کے قریب ہزارہ فرزندوں کو شہید کیا گیا ہے پارٹی چئیرمین حسین علی یوسفی سمیت ہر شعبۂ زندگی سے تعلق رکھنے والے افرا د کا قتل عام صوبے میں فرقہ ورانہ فسادات پھیلانے کیلئے منظم اور گہری سازش کی نشاندہی کرتاہے جس کے ذریعے صدیوں سے مذہبی رواداری اور باہمی احترام کے ساتھ زندگی گزارنے والے اقوام کو خانہ جنگی کی طرف لے جانا مقصود ہے ۔ مگر صوبے کے سیاسی ، مذہبی اور قوم دوست قوتوں نے عالمی طاقتوں اور مسلم ممالک کے اختلافات کی جنگ کے سازشوں کو محسوس کرکے صوبے میں فرقہ واریت پھیلانے والی قوتوں کی سازشوں کو ہمیشہ ناکامی سے دوچار کر رکھا ہے یہی وجہ ہے کہ بڑے سانحات رونما ہونے کے باوجود کسی قسم کے بڑے انتشار یا واقعہ صوبے میں رونما نہیں ہوا۔ عبد الخالق ہزارہ نے کہا کہ ہزارہ قوم تعلیم یافتہ اور ہنر مند قوم ہے جہنوں نے ہمیشہ بلوچستان اور ملک کی ترقی و تعمیر میں اہم کردار ادا کیا ہے ۔مگر ہزارہ قوم کے تمام قربانیوں کو فراموش کرکے آج ہزارہ قوم کے ساتھ جس طرح کا رویہ اختیار کیا گیا ہے اس سے ملک کے ان تمام اقوام کی حوصلہ شکنی ہورہی ہیں جن کے بزرگوں اور نوجوانوں نے ملکی تعمیر و ترقی اور دفاع کیلئے قربانیاں دی ہے ۔پارٹی رہنما کا کہنا تھا کہ فرقہ واریت کی آڑھ میں ہزارہ قوم سے روزگار ، تجارت اور کاروبار کے مواقع چینے جارہے ہیں جبکہ ہزارہ نوجوانوں پر اعلیٰ تعلیم کے دروازے بند کئیے جارہے ہیں پارٹی نے حالات اور واقعات کا گہری نظر سے مشاہدہ کرنے کے بعد ہزارہ قوم کے عام اور نسل کشی کے خلاف پہلے مرحلے میں ملکی سطح پر احتجاج اور مظاہروں کے ذریعے اپنا احتجاج ریکارڈ کرایا مگر حکومت اور قانون نافذ کرنیوالے اداروں کی عدم دلچسپی اور کوتاہی کے باعث پارٹی نے بین الاقوامی طور پر احتجاج اور مظاہروں کی کال دی جسکے نتیجے میں دنیا کے 38 سے زائد شہروں میں مظاہرے ہوئے ۔ اور ہزارہ قوم کے تنظیموں ، انجمنوں اور اداروں نے اقوام متحدہ سمیت تمام عالمی فورم پر ہزارہ قوم کی نسل کشی کے خلاف آواز بلند کیا ۔ پارٹی اور ہزارہ قوم اپنی مظلومیت کی آواز دنیا کے گوشے گوشے تک پہنچا کر ثابت کیا کہ ہزارہ قوم جمہوریت پر یقین رکھتی ہے اور تمام مراحل میں کسی طرح کے تشدد اور نقصان پہنچانے کے عمل سے گریز کیا۔ پارٹی رہنما نے توقع ظاہر کی کہ اسلام آباد میں بیٹھے ہوئے حکمران بلوچستان میں امن کے قیام اور فرقہ واریت کے خاتمہ کے سلسلے میں سنجیدگی کا مظاہرہ کرتے ہوئے امن و امان کے قیام کے عمل کو تیز کرینگے۔ اور کراچی کے طرز پر کوئٹہ اور دیگر علاقوں میں فرقہ وارانہ دہشت گردوں کے خلاف ٹارگٹڈ آپریشن کرکے صوبے سے فرقہ وارانہ دہشت گردوں اور انکے مراکز کے خاتمہ کو اپنی ترجیح بنا لینگے ۔ انہوں نے وزارت خارجہ سے مسلم ممالک کے جنگ کو پاکستان اور خصوصاً بلوچستان سے منتقل کرنے کے سلسلے میں دلیرانہ مؤقف اختیار کرنے کا مطالبہ کیا

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