SMARTLY dressed with his arm around his father’s shoulder, toddler Taha Fiazi looks curiously at the camera for a final portrait before his family were to board a boat for Australia. Taha, his father Ezatullah and mother Hakima Abasi left Indonesia last August full of hope for a new life free of the persecution they [...]
By Jeffrey Stern Imagine that you live in Afghanistan. Your ancestors have lived there for hundreds of years, but you are a minority. In fact, you are a minority two times over, because the religion you practice is different from the one most people practice, and the way you look is different from the way [...]
Continue reading …by Muhammad younas Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) seems to have lost from PB2 Quetta-2 seat for Balochistan assembly while Majlis-e-Wahdatul Muslimeen (MWM) seems to have unofficially won. Despite being victorious in bagging Hazara Shia popular vote, HDP has technically lost the PB2 Qta-2 seat in Quetta City, Pakistan. Now let’s analyze the post election scenario [...]
Continue reading …By Richard Marcus Whenever I’ve wanted to learn something about a culture I’d read the stories the people told each other. Not the stories others tell about them, or what’s been written about them in history books, but the ones which have been passed down from generation to generation. They could be anything from myths [...]
Continue reading …By DECLAN WALSH KARACHI, Pakistan — Stranded in a dingy hotel in the heart of this port city, waiting for the smuggler’s call, Hussain felt at once trapped and poised for freedom. Behind lay his hometown, Quetta, the city in western Pakistan that has become a killing ground for Sunni sectarian death squads that hunt [...]
Continue reading …by Carly West “It is our religious duty to kill all Shias… in all of Pakistan, especially Quetta, we will continue our successful jihad against the Shia Hazara and Pakistan will become a graveyard for them.” -A letter of intent circulated by the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) in 2011 Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons The Pakistani [...]
Continue reading …By Gul Yousafzai QUETTA, Pakistan, April 23 (Reuters) – A prominent leader of Pakistan’s ethnic Hazara minority narrowly escaped a suicide attack that killed six people on Tuesday, underscoring the growing threat militants pose to secular politicians in the run-up to next month’s general elections. The blast in Quetta was the worst attack since a [...]
Continue reading …by Marina Mogli 1. Mohammad, a Hazara refugee and asylum seeker in Sweden Mohammad’s story starts 23 years ago in Qarabagh, Afghanistan. He is a Hazara, one of the most oppressed ethnic groups of Afghanistan. Accounting for up to one-fifth of Afghanistan’s population, Hazaras have long been branded outsiders. Their current persecution is borne out [...]
Continue reading …Three years ago the first Gole Badam Festival was held in Daykundi Province. In 2010 Hazara People International Network proposed to create this Festival in order to celebrate the almond tree’s florescence. Almonds are the main agriculture product in the Province and many families base their subsistence on it. While the rest of Afghanistan is [...]
Continue reading …Ben Doherty Despite the risks of the long, slow boat trip to Australia – made starkly evident by the Christmas Island disaster this week when two asylum seekers drowned – hundreds of ethnic Hazaras in Pakistan are planning the same trip. Facing what they have described as a ”systematic genocide” in Pakistan, more and more [...]
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