According to Jang News Karachi, two unidentified terrorists on motorcycles approached the Katarko school and knocked at the closed door. Upon opening the small window in the gate for inquiry, the assailants opened fire with AK-47 killing two Hazara security guards/watchman – Chaman Ali s/o Ali Hassan (45) and Hafeezullah s/o of Ghulam Hussain (40) – while critically injuring Mohsin s/o Safdar (20). The deceased and the injured were shifted to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.

All three are residents of  Yaqoob Shah Basti in Monghopir, which has recently become the hub of Taleban terrorists and a virtual no-go area for the ordinary citizens of Pakistan.

More than 1100 Hazaras have been killed over last one decade in Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan, by Al-Qaeda-cum-Taliban linked militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Jangvi (LeJ) and its affiliates under the very nose of the government and it’s law enforcement agencies.

The state of Pakistan; the elected government, law enforcement agencies and an otherwise hyperactive judiciary, has blatantly failed to protect the ethno-sectarian minority in Quetta. Inaction of the security forces against the terrorist outfits has resulted to a serious perception that they are complicit in the genocide of Hazaras in Balochistan. Such concerns have been raised by a number of human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International.

The acting Governor of Balochistan province, Nawab Zulfiqar Magsi, has confessed that “the terrorist attack on the Hazara community in Quetta is a failure of the intelligence and security forces”. However, we believe that terrorists groups such as Lashkar-e-Jangvi (LeJ) operate under the patronage of the country’s military establishment and it’s intelligence agencies which is evident from the fact, among others, that a handful of killers succeed to launch terror attacks on Hazaras repeatedly without being apprehended or even chased. We, therefore, stage a world-wide hunger strike unless our demands are met:

1: Declare a state of emergency regarding the Hazara state of affairs, as authorized by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
2: Apply diplomatic pressure on Pakistani government to immediately cease acts of discrimination against the Hazara and to stop supporting terrorist groups who commit violent acts against them.
3: Ask the Refugee Convention’s state parties to protect Hazara asylum seekers and grant them asylum.
4: Establish an international truth Commission to investigate crimes against the Hazara.
5: Open comprehensive cases concerning genocide and gross human rights violations in international courts such as the ICC.
6: Appeal to international media to investigate and report on activities against the Hazara, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

December, 01, 2012, Gothenburg,Sweden.
Speakers at the conference:

• Ustad Kazim Yazdani (Historian, author of ‘a research in the history of Hazaras’):A Brief History of Hazara people
• Dr.Saleem Javed (Freelance journalist, human rights activist): Hazara genocide in Quetta—Timeline and Motives
• Prof.Dr.Ishtiaq Ahmed (Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University. He is also Honorary Senior Fellow of the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.): Religious and Sectarian Minorities in an Ideological State: The Case of Pakistan.
• Ali Dayan Hassan (Director at Human Rights Watch, Pakistan, Asia division):
Deteriorating Human Rights Situations in Pakistan
• Prof.Nazir Hussain (Educationist and social activist, Quetta)
• Ustad Boman Ali Qasimi (Writer, social activist): Hazara Persecution in Afghanistan
• Aref Farman (Novelist and president of Association for Protection of Afghan Refugees in Iran’):Closing speech

Over last one decade, according to Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, at least 800 members of Hazara ethnic minority have been target-killed, around 3,000 innocent people including women, children and students injured in Balochistan. Most of the attacks have been claimed by Al-Qaeda linked terrorist outfits, such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. However, the government of Pakistan has either been incapable or remained a mere spectator as the onslaught continues against the community of only half a million population who are now confined to just their own localities in fear of getting attacked.

On December 01, 2011, a conference entitled ’ Hazara Genocide in Pakistan; Challenges and Solutions’ was held in Gothenburg, Sweden, in order to raise awareness among the Swedish civil society about the plight of Hazara ethnic minority in Pakistan.

More than two hundred people including some human rights activists from across Sweden attended the conference despite a cruel sub-zero temperature.

The Conference, hosted by Laila Arozo & Ali Saqi, formally began on 14:30 CET

A prominent historian and author, Ustad Kazim Yazdani gave a comprehensive account of atrocities committed against the ethnic Hazaras in the 19th century by the then Emir of Afghanistan, Abdul Rahman Khan, who had come to power through a deal with the occupying British army. He explained as to how the king had massacred about 62% of the Hazaras, persecuted and enslaved them in thousands. Lands and properties of Hazaras were confiscated and distributed among his own tribes. He further clarified as to how Abdul Rahman Khan had used religion as a weapon and ordered 13 judges and clerics to author a book in the favor of submission to Emir’s will in order to pave the way for declaring a Jihad against the Hazaras.

A documentary film about the brutal killings of Hazaras in Pakistan over last one decade, produced by Sajjad Gohar, was shown at the conference which made a number of eyes tear.

Immediately after the documentary ended, Dr.Saleem Javed—a freelance journalist and human rights activist—described some gruesome attacks on Hazaras of Pakistan in 2012 with references to reports published in the country’s newspapers and produced by various human rights organizations. While describing the threats faced by the community, he explained the main reasons behind the systematic assault against the ethno-sectarian minority under the very nose of federal and provincial governments. According to him Talibanisation of Balochistan, plans to bring about demographic change in Quetta, sectarian terrorism etc were some of the main factors behind Hazara killings.

Then a Pakistani-Swedish political scientist, author and writer, Prof.Dr.Ishtiaq Ahmed, in his detailed speech traced the roots of sectarian and religious hatred in the region, particularly Pakistan. He explained how religious and sectarian extremism had been used as a pressure and strategic tool by many countries including Pakistan. According to him, Islam was used as a tool in the creation of Pakistan and later, in 1970s, the Ahmaddiya community was victimized to appease Shia and Sunni religious groups. By his in-depth analysis he clarified that Pakistan’s military establishment, Saudi and Iranian regimes had used religion in their proxy wars which resulted to the victimization of most vulnerable minorities such as the Hazaras. He urged the Swedish civil society to raise voice against the killings of Hazaras by sending petitions, staging demonstrations, writing articles etc as they are an easy target and because nobody is supporting them.

After a 15-minutes coffee-break the conference resumed by speech of Pakistan’s Director at Human Rights Watch, Ali Dayan Hassan, through video conferencing who highlighted the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities in Pakistan. He was of the view that Pakistan faced a multiple human rights challenges, particularly in Balochistan which is a home to Taliban and it’s affiliates who had been historically allied with the security establishment of Pakistan. While evaluating the human rights situations in the country he brought it to notice that attacks on minorities including Hindus, Christians, Ahmadis etc have increased in recent years. He meanwhile reported that a third of all Shias killed in Pakistan in 2012 are Hazara who face a double jeopardy due to their sect and ethnicity. He said that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had issued a warning later last year asking the Hazaras to leave Pakistan and continued their attacks with impunity which has created an extreme sense of insecurity among the Hazara community. He told the audience that Baloch actors in the government of Balochistan had been found publicly unsympathetic to the plight of Hazaras while response of the state was negligible or nonexistent. He also engaged with the audience and answered their questions. As a human rights advocate, he promised to take up the issue of Hazara killings on every relevant forum.

Prof.Nazir Hussain, educationist and social activist, also joined the session via video conferencing and updated the audience about Quetta situations including rise of a new militant group named Jaish-ul-Islam who has claimed responsibility for latest attacks on Hazaras. He analyzed the political transformations which has taken place in the region after the Afghan Jihad against the Soviet Union and it’s consequences.

Unfortunately Ahmed Shuja and Ashraf Jawadi could not be taken online due to some technical issues. However, their answers to the queries will be published along with the transcripts of all the speeches made at the conference.

Following the Debate Session, Ustad Boman Ali Qasimi, writer and social activist, spoke about the persecution of ethnic Hazaras in Afghanistan in the contemporary period particularly under the Islamic Emirate of Taliban. He quoted a data compiled by the Human Rights Watch that Taliban had massacred at least 2,000 Hazaras in Bamiyan, 300 in Yakawlang and around 2,000 in Mazar-e-Sharif. He argued that the Afghan sources say the actual number was 6,000 to 8,000 while the local sources estimated the causalities to be as high as 10,000 as the killing spree had continued for many days across Hazarajat. He added that Hazaras have been killed even under the very nose of US-led NATO forces during Hamid Karzai’s regime. He referred, for instance, to Taliban-sponsored Kuchi attacks in Behsud and Daimirdad where according to Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission at least 24 Hazaras were killed, 84 houses were burned down and 6,000 families were displaced in 2008 alone. He also conveyed the concerns of the Hazara community about Taliban’s comeback.

The conference’s closing speech was delivered by Afghan-Swedish novelist and refugee rights activist, Aref Farman, who summarized the main points discussed at the conference. He said that he had himself witnessed that most of Afghan refugees in Iran were Hazaras who had been persistently subjected to cruelty and prejudice despite being Shias. He requested the Swedish civil society and human rights activists to raise the issue with Swedish government in order to pressurize the government of Pakistan to provide security to all ethnic and religious minorities, including Hazaras.

At the end the following resolution was read in English and Persian by Laila Arozo and Ali Saqi which was anonymously passed and later signed by all the attendants at the conference which will be sent to the relevant embassies along with other documents about the killings of Hazaras.

Resolution

Gothenburg Conference on Hazara Genocide in Pakistan

• We demand a high-level judicial investigation into the on-going persecution and systemic genocide of the Hazaras in Pakistan.

• We request the Swedish civil society, human rights activists and media personnel to raise the issue of Hazara genocide on national and international level.

• We demand that human rights organizations send their investigative teams and observers to monitor the situation in Pakistan and accordingly put pressure on the government of Pakistan to protect minorities including the Hazaras who are being killed on a daily basis.

• We request the Swedish civil society to pressurize the government of Sweden to tie any aid to Pakistan to the human rights conditions and to the protection of minorities including Hazaras.

• We demand the government of Sweden to raise our concerns with the NATO countries to map out a clear plan about the protection of Hazaras and other unarmed civilians in Afghanistan and to prevent Taliban’s comeback.

• We demand the Islamic Republic of Iran to improve the human rights conditions in the country and to treat the Afghan refugees in accordance with the international law.

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1. Introduction
In recent years, Hazara ethnic consciousness is believed to have developed sharply. The process is said to have arisen with the start of the 1978 war in Afghanistan and the trend further intensified during the 1990s civil war in Afghanistan. The argument is that as a historically fragmented and politically marginalized group, Hazaras have developed a common historical and political consciousness and demonstrate an internal ‘political bond’ that ‘has not been seen for a century’ (Canfield 2004).

Political developments under the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul and the emergence of anti-Soviet organizations among rural Hazaras during the 1980s are believed to have contributed to the rise of what has been described as a specific ‘Hazara ideology’ (ibid).

For the sake of argument, these observations are taken as starting points. The paper argues that
ethnicity and ethnic consciousness among the Hazaras is inexorably linked with the emergence of the
Afghan state in the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis and instability that it has gone through
in recent decades.

The paper explores the impact of incorporation of the Hazarajat region into the
Afghan state and subsequent political marginalization and mass migration as well as internal responses
to these external forces, in particular articulation and expression of a shared memory of persecution
and marginalization by literate Hazaras, in particular the ulema and intelligentsia, in Afghanistan and
certain places in the Pakistan, Iran and Iraq, in shaping and defining Hazara ethnic identity. To account
for the different phases in articulation of ethnic identity as well as the dramatic changes in the external
environment in which these developments took place, the paper makes a distinction between the
periods before and after 1978, when the war began in Afghanistan.

The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the evolution of Hazaras ethnicity and ethnic
consciousness is a salient but complex and dynamic process. It is the product of external political,
economic and social environment as well as actions and initiatives by members of this particular ethnic
group in different locations.

2. Scales of Identity among the Hazaras
Delineating what precisely constitutes ethnicity in general and an ethnic identity of the Hazaras in particular is a delicate challenge.Before I attempt to present shared features that distinguish Hazaras from other neighbouring ethnic groups, it is important to note that Hazaras like members of other ethnic groups can potentially identify with several layers of identity. This can range from small scale social units based on kinship, clan and village to broader regional, political and religious affiliations. As in Afghanistan in general, the Hazaras usually use the word qawm to refer to various scales of geographical, tribal and ethnic identity. Thus, one can identify with a qawm which is at the same time be defined as a clan and as an ethnic group.

However, during the last two decades the Hazaras have experienced a dramatic shift in their selfconsciousness from localized identities to a large scale identity defined as an ethnic group. This means that while smaller scale identities continue to exist, the word qawm increasingly refers to a trans-local ethnic identity. During the 1990s, this shift was most plainly manifested in the establishment of the Hizb-e Wahdat Islami Afghanistan (Party of Islamic Unity of Afghanistan) that after its establishment in 1989 unified the Hazarajat region under its political and military control and was ‘capable of formulating demands for concessions at national level’ (Harpviken 1998: 177). More recently, this shared sense of unity can be observed in the spontaneous organization of protests by the Hazara diaspora in dozens of cities around the world against targeted killings of Hazaras in Quetta, Pakistan.

After a series of targeted attacks in the city in August-September 2011 and April-May 2012 during which dozens of Hazaras were killed,a chain of demonstrations were organized around the world to protest against what the protestors have often described as a ‘genocide’2 of the Hazaras in the city by radical Sunni militant organizations.3

To read all the Research click here

Source & Copyright

Book “Genetics: Analysis of Genes and Genomes” is a wrong reference to Hazara genealogy

Authors claim “The Hazara consider themselves to be Mongol origin, and many claim to be direct male-line descendants of Genghis Khan”.
Hazara People International Network is in contact with thousands of the Hazaras around the world, and is working closely with them to establish the Hazara rights. Hazara People International Network is also in contact with many Hazara social, cultural and political organizations inside Pakistan. None of these Hazaras consider themselves as the Mongol.
Furthermore, the authors claim is not based on any DNA test, and they didn’t have one single DNA sample of the Hazaras. Therefore using this book as a reference to Hazara genealogy is absolutely wrong.

Hazara people are Turkic people and descendants of the Kushans. Like other Turkic peoples such as Uzbek, there maybe is Mongol influence in less than ten percent of Hazaras. Hazara people are living in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India and central Asian countries like Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Millions of Hazara people were and are forced to leave their homeland, the country we call Afghanistan now.

No group and no one has yet taken the responsibility for today’s murder, however, such attacks are usually related to the terrorist groups such as Lashkar e Jhangvi, Sepah e Sahaba and the Taliban in Quetta who are all famous for bloodsucking of the Hazaras.

It is now a long story that the Hazaras are being targeted systematically in Quetta Pakistan. At least in the two passed years, hundreds of them are being killed by different terrorist groups who are not identified by the government nor trialed, neither imprisoned yet.

The Hazaras have made many efforts using their protests in the international level to make their voices heard by the International Community and the UN Security Council for their actions, but so far no any reaction by the UN Security Council in this regard.

In the presence of German artists, these Afghan officials attacked the Hazara artists physically using racist words against them and considered their arts works as non-Islamic. Then Mohsen Taasha and Amin Taasha were taken in custody for an hour. Azizullah Hazara another artist was also taken in custody for longer.

Condemning this act of racism against the Hazara artists, Hazara People International Network believes, this plot is a part of the continuous regular organized attacks against the interest of the Hazaras.

In the passed one month, while the Kochis (nomads) along with the Taliban have attached on Hazaras in Behsud and burnt hundreds of volumes of Holy Quran, the Ministry of Information and Culture did not show any reaction against it.

And now these officials who are mostly illiterate and are not able to write a single paragraph without mistakes, justify their act of racism under the name of religion.

Among the confiscated art works of Hazara artists, there are paintings that symbolically show the systematic genocides of the Hazaras by the tyrant king, Amir Abdurahman Khan in the end of 19th century. The systematic massacre that took lives of more than 60 percent of the Hazara population as a result of which, tens of thousands of Hazaras were sold as slaves.

The lands of Hazaras in the south of (current) Afghanistan were given to the Pashtoon Kochis by the official decree of the king Abdurrahman Khan and hundreds of thousands of Hazaras were forced to flee their fatherlands.

In all these organized inhumane attacks against the Hazaras and their interests, the enemies always used the name of religion to justify their cruelty.

This racist attitude of the Ministry of Information and Culture of Afghanistan against the Hazara artists, reminds the Hazaras, the censorship and the forge of their history that contains the historical genocides of the Hazaras in the passed two centuries.

Most of the Pashtoon senior officials in the government always forge the statistics data about Hazara population and write wrong reports on Hazara population to show them fewer than they are this way, in any administrative and development plans at national level less budget is allocated to them. The latest insulting book, “Ethnographic Atlas of non-Pashtoon Ethnics of Afghanistan” was another scenario against the Hazaras this year.

In 2009, thousands of volumes of books written by Hazara authors were dropped into the river, because they talked about the history of the Hazaras. In the same year, the film The Kite Runner that shows a small part of historical discriminations against the Hazaras was banned by the Pashtoon extremists, to conceal the historical facts about the Hazaras.

Hazara People International Network considers this insult, not only to these three artists, but to all Hazara people in all over the world, meanwhile Hazara People International Network is sure, that such destructive racist plot can never affect Hazaras’ unity and progress.

Hazara People International Network invites the writers, journalists, intellectuals and politicians of Hazara society to continue their efforts for public awareness and spread of knowledge and information throughout the world, by different means and mediums of communication based on the truth and historical facts about the Hazaras.
As we know more and as we unite, we are stronger against the enemies of humanity.

Hazara People International Network

www.hazarapeople.com

REUTERS PICTURES

Police officials said the bus was the target of the attack.

This was the latest in a string of attacks in Balochistan targeting the Hazara minority. Hundreds of Hazara have been killed, mainly in drive-by shootings, this year. The violence has been blamed on the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a notorious anti-Hazara ethnic group.

The motive for Hazara genocide in Quetta (Provincial capital of Balochistan) is a serious issue with its high trends in the social networks these days. Everyone has a different thought on this issue.

Hazaras are being slaughtered in Quetta Pakistan since last decade and more than 700 Hazara Pakistani civilians living in Quetta have been murdered in target killings and hundreds are wounded so far. The attacks are being launched by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) which is an anti Shiite Pakistani religious extremist banned group that has claimed responsibility for plenty of deadly attacks on Hazara minority living in Quetta.

Hazaras living in Quetta are mostly Shiite Muslims; there are also a considerable number of Sunni and Ismaiely Hazaras as well. They can easily be recognized because of their similar facial structure to the Mongols, thus they are the primary victims of the attacks.

A brief introduction to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) terrorist activities:
July 2011: LeJ claimed responsibility for shooting passengers waiting at a bus terminal in Quetta, killing eleven and wounding three others. All of the victims were Hazaras. The attack was claimed as revenge for the death of a Sunni Mullah.

July 2011: LeJ claimed responsibility for an attack on police in Quetta in which two police officers and a civilian were killed. Both police officers were Hazaras.
June 2011: Suspected LeJ militants shot dead the deputy director general of the Pakistani Sports Board in Quetta. The victim was a Hazara.

May 2011: Suspected LeJ militants shot dead seven Hazara civilians and wounded six others in Quetta.
May 2011: Suspected LeJ militants killed eight Hazaras and wounded 15 others in a hot arms and grenade attack in Quetta;
August 2010: Four LeJ operatives were arrested for involvement in May 2010 attacks on Ahmadi Mosque.
June 2010: LeJ operatives were linked in media reports to suicide attacks on Ahmadi places of worship in Lahore.

April 2010: LeJ operatives conducted a double suicide attack targeting refugees in Kohat District, KP, killing an estimated 44 people and injuring at least 64 others.

March 2010: LeJ fraction Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al-Alami was linked to the kidnapping of British journalist Asad Qureshi and former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Colonel Armir Sultan. The kidnappers reportedly killed a third hostage, former Pakistan Air Force officer and former ISI member Khalid Khwaja.

March 2010: at least 57 people were killed and at least 90 others were injured when twin suicide bombs detonated in Lahore’s RA Bazaar. LeJ claimed responsibility.
January 2010: LeJ claimed responsibility for ambushing Hazara policemen in Quetta.

November 2009: LeJ claimed responsibility for a bomb blast targeting the Deputy Inspector General of Police Operations and warned that additional attacks would be conducted against the police.
March 2009: LeJ was suspected of involvement in the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, but charges against LeJ co-founder Malik Ishaque were dropped because the prosecutors could not prove the claim of the case.

September 2008: three LeJ-trained operatives were killed in a police raid. The police also found bomb-making material and the body of a Pakistani businessman who had been kidnapped and killed by the operatives.
September 2008: former LeJ leader Qari Zafar is suspected of involvement in the suicide bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.

July 2008: senior LeJ member Shafiqur Rehman was arrested in Quetta. He confessed to seven assassinations in Quetta and is suspected of involvement in over 100 cases of sectarian terrorism.

February 2008: LeJ member Fida Hussain, who is believed to have been involved in the suicide bombing of a Pakistan Air Force bus in October 2007, was arrested in Lahore; and January 2008: LeJ was suspected of involvement in a bombing near a mosque in Peshawar in which 14 people were killed.

These activities indicate that LeJ has not only been terrorizing Shiite Muslims or Hazaras but it has also a considerable role in targeting Pakistani civilians of other faiths as well. However, it has been proved that victims are most likely to be Hazaras in past few years.

On the other hand the Shiite Genocide has turned in to an ethnic minority cleansing. The incidents occurred on Hazara community members on the passengers’ bus in Mastung; where the extremists stopped the bus and categorized Hazaras community members, took them off the bus, lined them up and shot them. The incidents in Spinni road, the rocket fire in Hazara graveyard in Brewery and other such incidents indicates that specific community genocide is taking place in Quetta city.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has published an open letter addressed the Hazara Community in Quetta, Pakistan.
Pakistan is packed up with dozens of religious outfits which constantly terrorize the Shiite Muslims in Pakistan and aims to turn Pakistan in to a complete Sunni state, primarily through violent means. Spiah-e-Shaba (SSP) is also known to be one of the most anti Shiite Muslims’ terrorist organisations in Pakistan.

SSP is one of the five terrorist organisations which were proscribed by President Parvez Mushraf in January 2002, due to having terrorist activities within the country. Despite being a banned organisation SSP has been active with only just a change of name. SSP is renamed to Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan.

In 2003 SSP published a Religious Decree (Fatwa) declaring Shiite Muslims as “Infidels” and urging followers for taking extreme steps.

This evidence was found in Madrassa Dar-ul-Uloom Jamia Imdadia, Mari Abad Quetta, Pakistan which was published by SSP.

These terrorist organisations hold Iran as the sponsor of Shiite extremist outfits in Pakistan. A score of Hazara community members also migrated to Iran during the prosecution of Hazara minority in Afghanistan. The anti Shiite organisations still believe that Hazaras belong to Iran. Iranian government discriminate against Sunni Pakistani refugees in Iran, accordingly these extremist outfits target the Hazara citizens in Pakistan.
Hazara community in Quetta are paying for the discriminations against the Sunni Pakistani refugees in Iran. In an interview of BBC Persian reporter with one of the leaders of SSP Maulana Ahmed Ludhianvi last year, the leader said, “Sunni Muslims are not given their rights in Iran; even they can’t work as an ordinary person.

We want the same in Pakistan; we will give those rights to Shiites in Pakistan which are given to Sunni Pakistanis in Iran.” He also added that this country (Pakistan) is Mostly consist of Sunni Muslims, therefore we want the President, the Prime Minister, the Army Chief and the President of Supreme Court all to be Sunni Muslims.

To the end it refers that extremist terrorist organisations have been targeting only Hazara Minority in Quetta city from past few years, rather than it would have any religious color inside. The incidents occurred on Hazara community since past some years show that it is a war and genocide only against the Hazaras not the other Shiite Muslims.