QUETTA: Hundreds of people belonging to the Hazara community, including women and children, held a protest rally here on Wednesday against last month’s suicide bombing at an educational centre in Kabul which left 52 people, most of them students, dead.

Members of the Hazara community, including elders, ulema and members of civil society, gathered in the Hazara Town area and took out the protest rally, carrying placards and banners inscribed with slogans seeking end to what they called genocide of the members of their community and stopping acts of terrorism against them.

Participants of the rally marched through different roads of the provincial capital chanting slogans against the terrorists involved in these attacks against mosques and educational institutions belonging to the Hazara community.

The protest rally later turned into a public meeting which was addressed by Allama Muhammad Asif Hussaini, Seema Sadat, Kashif Haideri and Mehdi Afzali.

The speakers condemned the suicide bombings in mosques, educational institutions and other places and termed these acts genocide of the Hazara community in Afghanistan.

“The international human rights organisations should recognise and declare these acts of terrorism as genocide of the Hazara community,” they demanded, adding that steps should be taken to stop these inhuman and barbaric acts against the Hazara community.

They expressed serious concern over the silence of United Nations and other international organisations over these attacks and said that the Hazara people and human rights activists had staged protests against these tragic incidents against their community across the world this week to draw the attention of the world towards the issue and to express solidarity with the victims of these terrorist attacks.

They also demanded that United Nations and all international human rights organisations should put pressure on the Afghanistan government to take strict action against the terrorist outfits involved in these inhuman acts.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2022