Subject: The Situation of the Hazara in Afghanistan
Lord Cameron, Lord Ahmad.
Dear David, Dear Tariq,
Following the oral question this week on Afghanistan I am writing to update you with details about the situation of the Hazara, a year after I shared a detailed report of the Hazara Inquiry with the FCDO.
The situation of the community continues to cause grave concern.
I recently received the following note from members of the community:
‘There are continuous and increasing threats against Hazaras that include targeted kidnapping and arrest of Hazara leaders, scholars, and military members and their family members across Afghanistan who are tortured in prisons without trial or they are killed.”
I have also had relayed to me the account of a Hazara woman whose sister was killed in front of her five children in Kabul. She was pregnant, and her husband was also taken prisoner and tortured, merely because the woman’s brother worked with the previous government and helped Hazara victims of suicide attacks.
Recently, two Hazara religious clerics were killed in Herat. Two ordinary men were shot dead in Bamiyan in the last month. There were two targeted explosions of a Hazara mosque and a sports centre with many victims since October 2023.
There is also a growing systemic project of exiling Hazaras from their native lands and building houses to house thousands of Pashtuns foreign to the area. This is happening in Nahoor district, Uruzgan, Diakundi, and many other Hazara-populated areas of Afghanistan.
Another crisis is the return of Hazara refugees from Pakistan and Iran.
Those who could only save their lives by crossing borders because they were either military personnel, human rights defenders, musicians, Youtubers, singers, women’s rights activists, or even human rights organizations’ staff are now brought back to be persecuted by the Taliban.
My interlocutor told me “The Taliban killed a lot of people I know personally on the first day of their return to Afghanistan.”
In Parliament last week I met two Afghan women judges. They told me that many Hazara women had been active and professional members of society in the past two decades. They are all now staying home. All Afghan women are subject to gender discrimination but Hazara women, doubly so.
My interlocutor ended her note to me by saying “I hope that the international community and human rights activists take the urgent matter of Hazara genocide into consideration as this has been going on for 130 years in silence.'”
I look forward to hearing from you about how the Government is responding to the needs of the Hazara community and, also, what is Government’s response to the Hazara Inquiry and its recommendations.
Yours sincerely,
David
(Lord Alton of Liverpool)
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