Continuous tragedy

For the fourth day hundreds of Hazara people in Quetta gathered on the main road in the city with the bodies of the 11 Shia Hazara coal miners slain in Machh on Sunday, demanding that Prime Minister Imran Khan visit them and offer some comfort. In a tweeted message, Imran Khan has said he understands the grief of the Hazaras and would visit them in time. This message, however, is hardly enough to console a devastated community. Especially after the disastrous clips going viral on social media, showing Zulfi Bukhari talking to Hazara Shia representatives, While various members of the federal government have spoken to the community, there has been no real voice of comfort. The question is not one of the PM visiting the bereaved. It is rather a question of just how important the government finds the brutality the Shia Hazaras have to go through, which has been described as a genocide of sorts. For years, Hazaras have continued to face death at the hands of militants. At the very least, they deserve a visit from the prime minister. They deserve respect; they deserve something more than empty condemnation.

And it doesn't stop at the government's door -- though needless to say, it is the government that has most to answer as far as reaching out to the Hazaras is concerned. That said, the opposition leaders also need to do something beyond tweeting snark at the government, It won't take much for them to at least go and condole with bereaved in Quetta. Using tragedy for political means is neither acceptable morals/ethics nor acceptable optics.

The Hazara killings are a tragedy, a terrible mass murder, intended to target a particular community and possibly exterminated. These attacks, no matter which militant group carries them out, are obviously spurred by sectarian hatred. These groups are united by a common ideology of hate. No one is safe from their wrath. This is why the government needs to stop treating different militant groups in different ways. We have been tackling only one symptom of a disease that has invaded the entire country. The traders of Quetta have said there will be a complete strike in Quetta today. Meanwhile, ministers from the federal government continue to try and persuade the Hazaras to bury the dead, so that once again another massacre can be forgotten. But for the Shia Hazara, there is no forgetting the dead, the continuous mourning, the looming threats – and, above all, the ever-present apathy by a state that just cannot heal the open wounds of a people that have lost so many of their own to senseless violence.