This brief summarises UK Hazara Diaspora concerns and what we are trying to do for our families and friends still in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is taken from the written evidence submitted by Friends of Hazaras and Hazara All-Party Parliamentary Group to the inquiry of the FCO work in 2013 and can be found in full at: parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/foreign-affairs-committee/inquiries1/parliament-2010/fcos-human-rights-work/?type=Written#pnlPublicationFilter Pakistan 1. The local context of any Human Rights abuses are frequently multi-faceted. The Hazara communities in Quetta and Afghanistan, though ostensibly persecuted for being adherents to Shia Islam by extremists in a Sunni majority population, have different causes and logically require different approaches for their solution. Likewise, the persecution of the Hazaras in Quetta, Pakistan include different roots from those of other minorities in Pakistan. According to the FCO, UK Aid is usually directed at projects the Pakistani Government has already supported or initiated. This could lead to a distortion of who receives aid. This distortion is reflected for the Hazara Diaspora in the UK; much value is given to information and insights provided by the Pakistani Diaspora in the UK through focus meetings with the FCO and DFID to help them prioritize issues. However, we are unaware of any similar UK Hazara Diaspora meetings, or of UK Hazaras attending those meetings. Thus there is a perpetuation of the imbalance of attention paid both to the needs of this group and to the root causes of its persecution, and an exacerbation of the isolation and downward economic spiral which the Hazaras of Quetta find themselves in. We request the FCO carefully investigate and assess the prevailing situation to these contexts as a prelude to any action of their own, or DFID’s, and to ensure that their efforts are aimed to redress the imbalance of influence rather than contribute to it, and to positively seek to include Diaspora from all sections of the Pakistani population in the UK to reduce any unintended perpetuation of the imbalance in the attention paid to the Hazaras of Quetta. 2. Pakistani Federal Home Minister Choudhry Nisar with the Chief Minister of Balochistan decided to disarm the “Death Squad” created by the previous government in the name of peace to counter Baloch insurgency. We want the Pakistani Government to build on this to provide security to the Hazaras, and in reforming the Baluchistan security institutions by controlling the extremist elements and engaging the Hazaras in the Frontier Corps. 3. Several of the attacks on the Hazaras of Quetta have been when they are travelling through the province outside of the two Hazara enclaves in the capital. Several instances involved the identification of Hazaras by the Sunni extremist group Lashkar-e-Jangvi, and then removing them from the bus for execution style killing at the roadside. The latest bus attack (as at April 2014) was in January 2014 when a car carrying explosives drove into it; 27 Hazaras were killed and 37 seriously injured. These attacks have had the effect of creating intense fear of leaving Hazara areas and even their houses thus resulting in their ghettoization into just 4sq miles. We want the Pakistani Government to invest more on i. security in the Hazara areas and for their travel outside of these areas and ii. putting in place specific measures to break their ghettoization.. 4. Baluchistan is a restive province and operating there is not without difficulties. However, UK DFID already works in KP and FATA, both provinces with a similar, if not greater, level of conflict. The Conflict Pool, the (UK) fund for conflict prevention, stabilisation and peacekeeping is already operating in Pakistan, but there are no similar, current or planned, undertakings in Baluchistan. Extending the geographic limits of these projects to Baluchistan could bring a measure of protection and redress to the Hazaras of Quetta. 5. Pakistan has been awarded duty-free access to EU markets - significant because the EU is Pakistan’s biggest export market. There are strict human rights criteria which Pakistan must adhere to in order to enjoy this special position and they include the protection of minorities. We want the Pakistani Government to live up to its commitment that clear HR improvements are made wrt minorities; and ask that the UK, and the EU do not hold back in using this as leverage. 6. UK Aid delivers rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes in conflict-affected areas of Pakistan to provide jobs and training. The Hazara population has been so severely affected economically through the death, severe disability or flight of the male population that many families have no breadwinners and have to depend on the support of their extended family or community to survive. This has also resulted in many children being taken out of school to eke out a living by porterage or selling trivia in the markets. No rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes are operating in Baluchistan and we ask the UK government to extend its UK taxpayers’ funded projects to the besieged and desperate Hazaras in Quetta. 7. UK Aid is also directed to work on women’s rights, and in 2013 targetted gender rights through education, this was directed at students in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkwha provinces. But not in Baluchistan, even though a bus carrying female University students in Quetta was blown up killing and maiming many of the passengers. For the Hazara with their love of education for both girls and boys it is specially hard that the young people have had their educational opportunities severely restricted Again we ask that this aid be geographically extended to Quetta which was the location of the cited attack, and was one of several attacks on buses carrying Hazaras students.. 8. Currently, Baluchistan is one of the most dangerous places for journalists; thus few venture into the province for security reasons but also because there is a serious curb on media reporting. This allows incitement to violence to go unreported and unchallenged. For example, Ahle Sunna Wa Jamayat (the political wing of LEJ) held a mass gathering on 14/03/2014 at Railway Hockey Ground Quetta. In the gathering two Jihadi anthems were sung, one in which Shias were declared Kafirs, (infidels) and pledges made to eliminate Hazaras from Balochistan. In the second Jihadi Anthem, they claimed responsibility for the 2013 January and February bombings on Hazaras and congratulated themselves for ‘scoring a century’ ie killing over a 100 in each attack. Source: https://facebook/photo.php?v=622857444451200 We have information on this through our local contacts and also because the organisers released a video on Facebook. To our knowledge no-one has been charged for this and no condemnation issued by the government. The Hazaras of Quetta are recognised as indigenous to Baluchistan, Pakistan and have a right to live peacefully and without interference. We want the Pakistani Govt to challenge these examples of hate speech and incitement to violence and to deter the radicalisation of the Baluch through controlling and dismantling extremist madrasas in Baluchistan.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 15:09:27 +0000