MPs call for action to protect Hazara people in Pakistan and Afghanistan The House of Commons will hear calls for international action to protect the Hazara people living in Pakistan and Afghanistan on Monday. The debate has been granted at the request of a cross-party backbench group of MPs. The Hazara originate from parts of Afghanistan. For over 100 years there has also been a small but significant community in Quetta, Pakistan. The Hazara have suffered repression and violence over a long period of time. The targetting of the Hazara reflects both the wider victimisation of Shia Muslims in the region and the Hazaras’s own distinct ethnic identity. Amongst the key issues that will be raised on Monday include: In Pakistan • long term and systematic violence has been waged against the Hazara in Quetta. With a population of just 500-600,000, living in just 4 sq miles more than 1400 have been killed and 3500 injured since 1999 • students have been forced out of university by the bombing of student transport, businesses closed, pilgrims and breadwinners murdered, family economies hit badly • 10,000s of Hazara have fled, comprising a significant number of the ‘boat people’ attempting to reach Australia • despite the frequency of the murders, and the responsibility claimed by the Al Qaeda affiliated group Lashkar-e-Janghvi (LEJ), successive Pakistan Governments have failed to bring a single person to justice In Afghanistan • The Hazara suffered systematic repression and killings under the Taliban regime. • Hazaras have enjoyed relatively improved conditions since the fall of the Taliban, although deep seated discrimination means that they are seriously under-represented in state employment and other sectors • As the withdrawal of international troops draws closer, the security situation is deteriorating again, with kidnapping, killing and disappearances of Hazaras. 30 Hazara were targetted in three separate killings in July 2014 alone. • Fears for the future have been heightened by the release, as part of a prisoner exchange, of a notorious Taliban leader who led attacks on the Hazara. The MPs are expected to call on the Pakistan and Afghan Government to do much more to protect the security of the Hazara, but also to call for international action by the UK government, through its diplomatic and development work, through the UN and its agencies, and in the political negotiations around the withdrawal of troops and support the new Afghan government. John Denham MP, Chair of the Hazara All Party Parliamentary Group said today ‘The plight of the Hazara community has been ignored by the international community for too long. With the dramatic events in Syria and Iraq there is a danger that the continuing violence against Hazara will remain unrecognised. Yet the roots of the violence in extremist, sectarian religious ideology, supported by foreign funding and tolerated by states, are very similar’. Watch it Monday evening on BBC Parliament. September 1st 2014
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:41:28 +0000
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