They’ve been killed in droves; dragged out of buses on blown up inside mosques, shot at roadside shops. In the days and months of this very bloody Pakistani decade, the tragedy of the Hazara is well known to the country and a regular part of the daily death count.

Theirs is a story of helplessness and hopelessness, of winter vigils beside cold corpses and of once smiling children killed in school uniforms. There has not been enough room for pity in politics, however, and the very regularity of the massacres faced by the Hazara have allowed their persistent perils to be filed away and forgotten. The geographical location of Hazara Town in Quetta has made it easy for sectarian assassins to target them; their distinctive features have further facilitated the ease of their selection for execution.

Also read: 'I am Hazara'

In a face of this sentence of eventual extermination; it is little surprise that the Hazara of Pakistan have been forced to flee. It is only by leaving the land which birthed them, it seems, that these persecuted people can evade the death that dangles over them.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 30,000 Hazara have left the country in the past five years, a large chunk of the approximately 500,000 strong population flanking the Afghan-Iran-Pakistan border.

Escape from this pitiless geography of home has not been easy. The most frequent destination for Hazaras fleeing sectarian extermination has been faraway Australia. To get to there, most must pay thousands of dollars to human smuggling operations. The smugglers operate through Indonesia where they feed the naïve and hopeless, the fantasy of safety in a foreign land. There, thousands of Hazara, many now deeply in debt to these traffickers, await their chance at the perilous ocean journey. If they can only get there, they believe, they can claim asylum.

Also read: 'Timeline: Hazara killings in Balochistan'

They are wrong. In recent months getting to Australia, no longer means the possibility of being allowed to stay in Australia. After the latest Australian election, the country’s new right leaning Prime Minister Tony Abbott has put into practice his promised policy of sending the flimsy boats full of asylum seekers back to Indonesia or one of the tiny islands dotting the Pacific before they can get to Australia.

“Operation Sovereign Borders” as this initiative is called, is committed to turning back everyone, including women and small children before they can get to Australia. Designed to drastically reduce the number of asylum seekers, the operation enjoys wide support among Australians.

To publicize it, the Australian High Commission in Islamabad has even placed advertisements in local Pakistani newspapers warning potential asylum seekers that, "If you go to Australia by boat without a visa, you won’t be settled there".

The fact that Australia itself is a nation of immigrants, many arriving by boat from Great Britain, has not swayed the Australians from closing off their borders, in this case their waters, to the safety seeking Hazara of Pakistan.

Also see: 'In-Depth - The Hazaras of Balochistan'

For the Hazara who attempt to make the journey; the choice is grim, if it is a choice at all. At home is the prospect of near certain death, the callousness of authorities and institutions, the lines of corpses and the barrage of bombings. For a chance at safety they must cross a perilous sea to other inhospitable shores.

The possibility of success is nearly non-existent and the perils of drowning very real. Just last June, nearly 60 asylum seekers drowned trying to get to land and the year before that, nearly 250 perished in the seas. It is a possibility that only those who have been rejected, excluded and exterminated by their own would consider; an option for those without options involving the careful weighing of drowning or detention abroad; against death at home.