Save Hazaras before it is too late

For Hazaras in Quetta, there is not a week that passes without the burial of a few loved ones as a result of terrorist attack. But this time, it was too much. Following twin bomb blasts that killed over 100 Hazara and injured nearly 300 in Quetta, Pakistan last Thursday, thousands of bereaved Hazara families staged a sit-in for four nights under freezing conditions, with a pile of 86 bodies lying on Alamdar Road.

In the blast one Australian resident was killed and another injured and there are unconfirmed reports of further Australian citizens among the dead and injured all from Hazara backgrounds.

Surprisingly, it has had little or no coverage in the Australian media nor does the Australia government done anything to identify the Australian citizens caught up in the incident.

Thursday's attack was carried out by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the most dangerous Sunni terrorist group operating in Pakistan. Inspired by Al-Qaida and Taliban ideologies, the group has for the last decade been targeting ordinary Hazara men and women on buses, in their shops, on their way to school and work. The snooker hall attack was the deadliest so far.

What emerges from this event is the extraordinary will of ordinary Hazara men, women and children to stand up against injustice in this long, desperately cold sit-in, night after night. And more importantly, they defied yet more terrorist threats and the Islamic tradition of burying bodies sooner rather than later.

'They [these dead bodies] are waking up the numb conscience of many, something even alive Hazaras have not been able to,' a female protestor said.

The exhibition of dead bodies and defiance set off acts of solidarity from Hazaras and non-Hazaras alike who joined sit-ins and protests right across Pakistan.

The protestors' demands; for the army to take control of in Balochistan, compelled the Prime Minister of Pakistan; Raja Pervez Ashraf, to dismiss the provincial government and Chief Minister, Nawab Aslam Raisani, and to announce a governor's rule to be imposed in Balochistan.

Only days later, the Prime Minister, was himself got an arrest warrant by the Pakistani Supreme Court over corruption charges, plunging the country into fresh political turmoil.

The removal of Nawab Raisani although a welcome move does not necessarily mean the situation will be improved, given that the Pakistani government policy on arresting the LeJ members remains murky.

Last year, in response to a journalist asking Nawab why he couldn't provide security to Hazaras, he replied

'We will send over truckloads of tissue paper, so they can wipe out their sorry tears.'

Hazaras hold a special place in the hierarchy of Pakistan's long-running sectarian violence. They are not just part of the 20% Shiite minority vilified by state figures such as Nawab, but have a distinctive Mongol appearance. This has marked them for special treatment by LeJ.

Lashkar-e-Jhagavi (LeJ) shares strategic goals with the Taliban to eradicate the Hazaras from Pakistan as the Taliban massacred Hazaras in Afghanistan during their reign (1996-2001).

In the past ten years, nearly 1000 Hazaras have been killed and over 2000 injured by the targeted killings in Quetta. However, not a single perpetrator has been brought to justice by the provincial Baluchistan government. The Pakistani government, the ISI is accused of collaborating with the attackers, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission.

"The callousness and indifference of the authorities offers a damning indictment of the state, its military and security agencies," said Ali Dayan Hasan, the Pakistan director at Human Rights Watch.

In fact, all of LeJ leaders have been released from high security prisons in Quetta and Lahore. The attacks intensified following their release. Malik Ishaq, the leader of LeJ, who was imprisoned on numerous charges of murder was released from Pakistani jail in September 2011. So was Usman Saifullah Kurd, the operational commander of LeJ in Balochistan, who escaped from a high security jail in 2008. Although they have the power, the Pakistani government does nothing much to stop the attacks on Hazaras or dispense justice.

There is yet another reason why Pakistan is not serious about arresting LeJ leaders. Like Afghanistan, Pakistan plays a double game in Balochistan in the hope of pulling fish from the muddy water.

There has been a Baloch Nationalist movement in Balochistan province for sometime. The Pakistani secret agencies have been involved in the enforced disappearance, killing and arresting of Baloch activists and leaders in recent years. According to Human Rights Watch, in 2012 about 200 Baloch Nationalist were killed in Balochistan by Pakistani secret agents. Allowing the LeJ to escalate its attack on Hazaras is an attempt by the Pakistani secret agencies to keep international attention away from its crackdown on the Baloch Nationalist movement.

In this void, LeJ has flourished, with training camps established across Balochistan that continue killing Hazaras with impunity. Thursday's blast shows that their attacks are becoming more sophisticated and deadly.

Of course, one can't separate this event from international terrorism and what is happening in Afghanistan and elsewhere. After the death of Osama Bin Ladin, the spokesperson of the LeJ, Ali Sher Haidari, warned that they would avenge his killing.

Yet the defenceless Hazaras have little protection from the Pakistani government and the terrorists who keep slaughtering them almost daily.

Many Afghans seeking asylum in Australia are from the Hazara community. Interestingly, the Australian government closed its door to Hazara asylum seekers by designing the "Pacific solution" as a way to discourage those fleeing the bloodbath in Quetta. Last December, 60 Hazaras were sent to Manus Islands to face an uncertain future.

An asylum seeker in Australia lost his two cousins in the snooker hall blast, one of them tried several times to get to Australia. But the Malaysian government deported him to Pakistan a few months ago as the Australian agents working in the region make it harder for Hazaras to reach Australia. Many more Hazaras died in the blast and before, waiting to come to Australia but their visas had not arrived because of the slow process of family reunion applications by the Australian immigration.

A total sense of desperation in Quetta drove many Hazaras to sit with the coffins of their loved ones in sub-zero temperature. It is not only the Hazaras in Quetta that mourn the constant killing but Hazaras across the world including Sydney and Melbourne who have held protests and candle-lit vigils to bring the plight of Hazaras to the world. They demand a stop to this brutal killing and genocide of Hazaras in Quetta before it is too late. How many innocent Hazaras will be killed by Sunni fanatics before the world acts?