Hazaras’ protest continues against Machh incident: Opposition leaders converge on Quetta, question PM’s absence

QUETTA/ISLAMABAD: As the Hazaras’ sit-in against the Machh massacre continued for the fifth day on Thursday, the leadership of opposition parties converged on Quetta, where they voiced solidarity with the mourning community and pointedly criticised the Prime Minister’s “failure” to be there in person.

The tragedy on Sunday, in which colliers of the Hazara community were kidnapped by terrorists from a remote mine in Machh, Balochistan, bound and subsequently slaughtered last weekend, led the Hazaras to stage a sit-in — with the bodies of the slain miners — in Quetta, demanding justice and protection. They have refused to bury the bodies until Prime Minister Imran Khan visits them personally.

The Premier had sent cabinet members Sheikh Rashid on Monday and then Ali Zaidi and Zulfi Bukhari on Tuesday to convince the Hazaras to bury their dead and listen to their demands. He himself appealed to them to proceed with the burials on Twitter, promising he would join them very soon, but to no avail.

The incident has also sparked a number of ongoing solidarity protests across the country — in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Multan — and has become political lightning rod, inviting recriminations from the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), who have termed the Prime Minister’s absence “apathetic”.

In Islamabad, Prime Minister Imran Khan chaired a high-level meeting over the Machh tragedy, where he received a briefing from interior minister Sheikh Rashid. He directed the meeting to devise ways to prevent such attacks, according to Geo News. Compensation for the victims’ families also reportedly came under discussion.

In Quetta, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz were among those who addressed the protest camp, along with Ahsan Iqbal, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah and former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gillani and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri.

In her speech, Maryam Nawaz offered her condolences to the camp and said: “I ask Imran Khan, these bodies that lie here, is your ego greater than these [people]?” She asked whether he was not coming out of “fear of criticism”. “So what? Come here and listen to the criticism for a while [...] but it is your duty to come here and share in their grief,” she said, according to Geo News.

Maryam said: “I lament the callousness of the one in the seat [of power]. You are calling out to him and he does not have the time to come,” she added, terming the Prime Minister “insensitive”. “You are that community that has been loyal to the land and have fully participated in the progress of Pakistan. It is now the state’s responsibility to look to your needs and soothe your wounds,” she said, adding that the leader that does not do so “does not deserve to remain in the seat of power”. “We will not allow him to remain in Islamabad,” she added.

Before her, Bilawal deplored the “state’s failure” to implement the National Action Plan to deter such crimes and lamented that every time the community is visited, it was because such an incident had occurred.

“Pakistan is a country where even the bodies of our deceased loved ones have to protest [for their rights]. We live in a land where everything is expensive — gas, electricity and food — but the blood of our labourers comes cheap,” said the PPP chairman.

Bilawal said it was the state’s foremost duty to guarantee the protection of the citizens’ lives and then it could look to employment and economic progress. He said, even in those areas, the Hazaras suffer injustice.

“You (the government) promised to eradicate terrorism [...] and if today the terrorists cannot only attack us, but spread hate also, then our National Action Plan has failed.”

Meanwhile, the Balochistan government constituted a joint investigation committee to probe the Machh incident. The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan, state media reported.

Chief Secretary Capt (retd) Fazeel Asghar briefed the meeting about terror incident. He said seven of the victims were Afghan nationals. However, the Afghan government had approached the government of Pakistan for seeking the custody of only three bodies to Kabul. The meeting also decided to initiate an inquiry against the relevant departments for negligence in discharging their responsibilities.

Separately, Balochistan government spokesman Liaquat Shahwani asked political parties to “avoid playing politics” on the Machh incident and promised the Hazara community that the provincial government would ensure security for them. Shahwani again requested the protesters to bury the bodies and cooperate with the provincial government in handing over three bodies to the Afghan government.