Highlights
- Protestors gathered at candlelight vigils in Sydney and Melbourne to mourn victims of Afghan terror attacks
- Hazara activists claim the attacks are part of a systematic genocide
- Calls for expedited permanent residency for Hazara refugees 'languishing' on temporary protection visas
Hazara community members have called on the federal government to grant permanent residency to more than 5000 refugees from Afghanistan who have been living on temporary protection visas (TPVs) for about nine years.
The call came in the .
“The Hazaras continue to remain under systemic, organised attacks in Afghanistan, targeting their fundamental human rights, security and freedom,” said the National Refugee-led Advisory and Advocacy Group chair, Shabnam Safa.
“Australia must do more to recognise this by starting to grant permanent protection to more than 5000 Hazara refugees languishing on TPVs for over a decade here,” she said.
“We must expedite family reunification applications that have been unreasonably delayed for several years to bring loved ones to safety."
These attacks continue to have a deep and personal impact on Hazara communities in Australia.
Organisers of candlelight vigils to mourn the victims of the bombings also called on Australia to lift a ban on resettlement of Hazara and Afghan refugees from Indonesia.
Adelaide-based Hazara lawyer, Besmellah Rezaee, said Australia had a moral obligation to help protect the Hazaras.
“One of the things the Australian government can actually do is to be a voice for the Hazara people who are openly subjected to genocide,” he told SBS Dari.
“The Australian government should at least offer protection to the scores of Hazaras who are at risk, and like Ukraine, at least rescue them from the serious and immediate danger,” he added.
“But unfortunately, the Australian government’s approach to this has been very political.”
According to the , at least nine children were killed and another 50 were injured in three bomb blast that struck a boys’ school and an education centre in the Hazara neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi in the capital Kabul last Tuesday.
Two days later, another attack targeted a Hazara Shia mosque in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif in Balkh province that killed at least 30 people and injured more than 90 others.
Several attacks have taken place in recent weeks across the country, including a bombing that occurred at a Sunni mosque in northern Kunduz province on Friday, killing at least 30 people, including children.
Hazara activist Zabi Mazoori said he had lost relatives in the recent “systematic attacks” against the community in Afghanistan.
I am gravely concerned for the safety of Hazaras in Afghanistan … the Hazaras have no protection in Afghanistan and are facing genocide.
Hazaras, who are the third-largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and are predominantly Shia Muslims, have been subjected to decades’ long persecution and marginalisation by the country’s past rulers, the Taliban, and other militant groups, according to Mr Mazoori.
Hazara activists including Mr Mazoori have long argued that the “targeted and systematic” attacks against the people amounted to “genocide”.
In an open letter addressed to world leaders, including Prime Minister Scott Morrison, dozens of Hazara leaders and activists from around the globe have asked them to “immediately and adequately pay attention to the situation of Hazaras in Afghanistan”.
They called for “preventative and effective” measure to protect Afghanistan’s Hazara’s from “genocide, persecution and crimes against humanity”.
Most of the attacks have been claimed by self-proclaimed Islamic State group (IS), but no group has yet claimed responsibility for the school attacks.
condemned the school attacks, calling them “reprehensible attacks” against the Hazara community which “also show that the Taliban, as the de-facto authorities, are failing to protect civilians, especially those from ethnic and religious minority groups.
Newly appointed United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett also condemned the attacks, calling for “investigation and accountability for the perpetrators”.
Members of the Australian Hazara community say the country’s de-facto rulers have limited media’s access to information and casualties of the recent attacks are much higher than what’s been reported in the media.
“Hazaras have long been Afghanistan’s most persecuted ethnic group and the history of attacks against Hazaras has become a serious existential threat against the community, particularly after the Taliban regime took control of the country in mid-August 2021,” the letter said.
Protestors at the candlelight vigils call for urgent action to assist the Hazara community in Afghanistan. Source: Ahmad Bakhtiary
“The massacre of Hazara children in Dasht-e-Barchi,” they said, is one of more than 30 bloody attacks carried out against the Hazaras in western Kabul since 2015.
Organisers of the candlelight vigils in Melbourne and Sydney said they believed the first step towards protecting Hazaras from harm was to recognise that they were up against “genocide”.
They demanded that the Australian government “recognise the systematic and targeted killing of Hazaras and Shias” as “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”.
“Our first demand was that [Australia and the international community] should recognise the targeted attacks on the Hazaras and Shias in Afghanistan, which amounts to crimes against humanity and can also be considered genocide,” Mr Mazoori said.
The organisers also asked the Australian government “not to recognise the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan” and list the fundamentalist group as a “terrorist organisation”.
Australia’s foreign minister Marise Payne has condemned the “escalating sectarian violence in Afghanistan that deliberately targets innocent civilians” including those killed in Thursday’s bombing at a Shia mosque in Mazar-e-Sharif.
Fundraising for survivors of terror attacks
Australian charity has been providing emergency relief to victims and survivors of such attacks in Afghanistan with recent efforts netting more than $50,000.
Mr Rezaee, who is also a board member of the charity organisation, said their teams on the ground were struggling to figure out exactly how many people had been killed and wounded as the Taliban had threatened the school and families of the victims not to speak to media and aid organisations.
“Unfortunately, the current rulers, who are definitely involved in the crime, have even threatened the school administration not to cooperate with the organisations and the media in giving them the figures of the dead and the wounded,” he said.
