On the morning of 20 September 2011 a passenger bus carrying more than 60 people left the Pakistan city of Quetta, headed for the Iranian border. Among those on board were men of various backgrounds and ages. Some were pilgrims travelling to Iran to visit the shrines of various Shi’a saints. Most were traders and labourers hoping to perform manual jobs in Iran and provide for their families back home.
Some were teenagers and young men in their 20s who were fleeing the growing spate of killings and insecurity in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Men who hoped to go to Iran and eventually make their way to Europe and seek asylum. At around midday, some 30 kilometres south of Quetta, their buses were stopped by masked men armed with rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs.
Hazara passengers were forced off the buses at gunpoint, lined up and then shot. The wounded were then shot again and again as they lay bleeding on the ground, breathing their last breath, not knowing the crime for which they were being killed. The masked men then chanted, "Allah is great’ Shi’as are infidels".
Mere hours later, as distraught relatives of the victims rushed to the scene of the incident, two further Hazaras were killed when masked men sprayed their car with bullets. The perpetrators filmed the massacre of the 26 Hazara men and later distributed the video through online news services and YouTube.
This massacre in Mastung was only one in a chain of targeted attacks against Pakistan’s minority communities, in particular members of the Hazara community who follow the Shi’a sect of Islam. In the year following the attacks, hundreds more Hazaras fell victim to discriminate attacks by the Taliban affiliated Sunni extremist group, Lashkar-e Jhangvi. The events in the last few days alone are a testimony to the ferocity and frequency of this gradual genocide in the making:
Why The Hazaras Are Fleeing | newmatilda.com
