Hazara mourners agree to call off Quetta sit-in, bury slain miners

QUETTA:

The government negotiators led by Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan and including Maritime Affairs Minister Ali Zaidi managed to persuade the Hazaras late Friday night to call off their sit-in and bury the coal miners murdered in Machh earlier this week.

The families, who had been encamped on the Western Bypass, alongside coffins carrying the mortal remains of the slain miners, confirmed they had ended their protest after their demands were accepted by the government.

“All of our demands have been accepted,” a member of the Hazara Shuhada Committee told reporters in Quetta. “The families have decided to bury their martyrs,” he said, after the late-night talks between the protesters and senior government functionaries in Quetta.

According to the agreement, the government will take action against those responsible for negligence in the Machh incident. A high-level commission, led by the provincial home minister, has been formed for investigation in this regard.

The agreement stipulates that the Balochistan government will pay Rs1.5 million compensation to the heirs of each martyr as well as provide employment.

Also read: PM won’t be ‘blackmailed’ into visiting Hazaras

Further, the federal and provincial security agencies will review the security situation in Balochistan, while the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) as well as Passport and Immigration offices will solve the problems being faced by the Hazara community.

In the wee hours of Saturday, several TV channels aired footages, showing the protesters carrying coffins of the slain colliers on their shoulders as they walked away from the protest camp on the highway in the Balochistan’s capital.

Last Sunday, 11 colliers, from the Hazara community, were slaughtered purportedly by the Islamic State terrorist group in the Machh area of Bolan district. Since then, the relatives and supporters of the community had been holding a vigil alongside the coffins of the victims.

The protesters had demanded that they would not end their sit-in and bury the dead until the prime minister comes to give them personal assurance that targeted killings of the ethnic Hazaras, who are predominantly Shias, would end.

The announcement of the agreement came hours after Prime Minister Imran once again made an impassioned appeal to the bereaved community not to make burials conditional to his visit, saying that a prime minister could not be “blackmailed” for such a visit.

 

“You cannot blackmail the prime minister of a country like this,” Imran said, while speaking at the launch of the Special Technology Zones Authority in Islamabad on Friday. “You bury the bodies today and I’ll be there with you,” he added.

Federal Minister Ali Zaidi, who was part of the government delegation, said on Friday night that the government had suspended officers on the demand of the Hazara protesters, while a high-level committee had been formed to monitor investigation into the attack.

“The committee will be headed by the Balochistan home minister and it will include two provincial assembly members, the commissioner of the region, two officials of the rank of deputy inspector general of police and two members of the Hazara Shuhada Committee,” he said.

“It will hold meetings at least once in a month,” the minister said. “The blood of Shuhada will not go in vain. We will try to save the nation from such tragedies,” he promised. The minister also announced the Balochistan government would provide jobs to the relatives of the slain coalminers.

Also read: Maryam slams PM Imran for calling Hazara mourners 'blackmailers'

Zaidi also said that Imran would meet the mourners. The premier “will himself explain them” after a meeting with the Hazara community in Quetta, the minister said, when asked about the remarks by Imran earlier in the day.

Hazaras have been frequently targeted in attacks mainly claimed by sectarian terrorist groups. According to the National Commission on Human Rights, more than 2,000 Hazaras have been killed in targeted attacks since 2004.

The community members have been subject to targeted shootings and mass bomb and suicide attacks, particularly in Quetta, where the majority of the country’s estimated half a million Hazaras reside.

Prime Minister Imran acknowledged the suffering of the Hazaras, saying that no other community had suffered as much cruelty as they have. He added that the brutal massacre of the 11 Hazara coal miners in Machh was part of a conspiracy that he has been highlighting “since March”.

He added that as soon as the Machh tragedy happened, he first sent Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid and then two federal ministers — Ali Haider Zaidi and Zulfi Bukhari — to speak with the mourners and assure them that the government stood with them.

The prime minister reassured the protesters that he would definitely visit Quetta but burial should not be linked to his visit. "I’m using this platform to say that if you bury them today, I will travel to Quetta to meet the families of the deceased,” he said.

“This should be clear. All of your demands have been met but you can't impose a condition which has [no logic]. So first, bury the dead. If you do it today, then I guarantee you that I will come to Quetta today,” he continued.

“I have sent them a message that look, when all of your demands have been met, then to demand that we will not bury the dead until the prime minister comes, no country’s prime minister can be blackmailed like this,” Imran said.

“Because [if the precedent is set] then everyone will blackmail the prime minister of the country,” he said, adding that this included a “gang of crooks” that has been trying to “blackmail” his government through street agitation for the past two-and-a-half years.

He didn’t identify the “gang of crooks”, but he was understood to be referring to the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), an alliance cobbled together by 11 opposition parties to challenge the incumbent government of Imran Khan.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Maryam Nawaz travelled to Quetta on Thursday to offer condolences to the bereaved Hazara community. While Bilawal focused his speech on the suffering of Hazaras, Maryam used the occasion to mount attack on the embattled prime minister.

Also read: Govt hits out at opposition for politicising Machh incident

In his speech, Imran also warned that India was focused on fanning the flames of sectarianism in Pakistan. “I had informed my cabinet and then gave public statements on this: India is trying its level best to spread chaos in Pakistan,” he said.

“I appreciate our intelligence agencies for the fact that they have thwarted four major terrorist attacks. Despite this, a high-profile Sunni religious scholar was assassinated in Karachi [...] with great difficulty we managed to quell the flames of a sectarian divide.”

Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid, meanwhile, said that the prime minister would travel to Quetta to meet with the bereaved community as soon as the slain colliers were buried. The minister said that the premier wanted to hold a “detailed discussion” with the Hazaras after the burial.

Previously, the protesters, who have braved the biting cold of winter for six days, had held several rounds of negotiations with the cabinet ministers, but to no avail. The protest over the Machh tragedy also spread to other cities, where community members blocked key roads.

As soon as the news that the sit-in in Quetta has ended reached other cities, protesters over there started following suit. (WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY RIZWAN SHEHZAD IN ISLAMABAD AND NEWS DESK)