Hazara’s genocide: women protest against brutal treatment
Dozens of women from Afghanistan’s Hazara minority demonstrated in the capital on Saturday after a suicide bombing killed 20 people – mostly young women from this ethnic group – the day before.
A suicide bomber blew himself up in a Kabul study hall on Friday as hundreds of students from the Dasht-e-Barchi district took tests for university entrance exams.
The West Quarter is a predominantly Shia Muslim enclave and home to the minority Hazara community – a historically oppressed group that has been the target of some of Afghanistan’s most brutal attacks in recent years.
Police said at least 20 people were killed, but the United Nations put the number at 24.
On Saturday, around 50 women chanted “Stop the Hazara genocide, it’s not a crime to be Shia” as they marched past a hospital in Dasht-e-Barchi where several victims of the attack were being treated. Dressed in black hijab and veil, angry protesters carried banners saying, “Stop killing Hazara,” AFP correspondent reported.
Hazara’s genocide: women protest against brutal treatment
After the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan, violence against the Hazara people has increased. With a long history of persecution, including by the Taliban, the Hazara’s rightly fear genocide.
As the Taliban and other armed groups target and commit human rights violations against the Afghan people, the ethnic and religious population of Hazara is particularly at risk. The international community must exert pressure on the Taliban to guarantee the protection of the rights of the Hazara people, so that no genocide is committed against them
