Members of the Shia Hazara community who have blockaded a highway in Quetta with the bodies of slain coal miners said on Tuesday they will not withdraw until Prime Minister Imran Khan meets them and the killers are brought to justice.
Armed attackers slit the throats of 11 miners in a residential compound near a mine site in Balochistan’s Mach coal field area on Sunday, filming the entire incident and later posting it online. The gruesome attack was claimed by the militant Islamic State (IS) group.
Thousands of Hazaras have since staged a protest, arranging the coffins in the western bypass area in Quetta.
“We have become tired of picking up the bodies of our people,” Syed Agha Raza, a Hazara Shia political leader, told Reuters.
Masooma Yaqoob Ali told Reuters her elder brother along with four other relatives were among those killed.
“Now we have no male member [of our family] to take coffins of our brother and other relatives to the graveyard for burial,” she said, shedding tears as she spoke.
The protesters are refusing to bury the victims of the attack until demands, which include the resignation of the provincial government, are met. Protests also took place on Tuesday in Karachi.
Balochistan Home Secretary Hafiz Basid told Reuters at least nine of the victims were from Afghanistan, and two bodies had thus far been taken there for burial. Afghanistan’s Foreign Office said in a statement that seven of the dead were Afghan, and both sides were investigating the incident together.
On Monday, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who arrived in Quetta on Prime Minister Imran’s instructions, held negotiations with a delegation of the Majlis-e-Wahdatul Muslimeen (MWM), who are leading the sit-in. He told them that the government was ready to accept all their demands except the one seeking the resignation of the provincial government and urged them to call off their protest so that the bodies could be laid to rest. However, the protesters refused to end their sit-in until Prime Minister Imran visited them.
Despite extremely harsh weather as the mercury dropped to minus 8 degrees Celsius in Quetta, the mourners, including women and children, refused to leave the protest site close to Hazara town and call off the protest, demanding ouster of the government and a judicial probe into the tragedy.
Earlier, the interior minister held a telephonic conversation with the MWM leader Allama Raja Nasir Abbas Jafri and offered his condolences over the killing of Hazara community members. Talking to reporters after the meeting with protest leaders, Rashid said that he had asked the MWM to form a five-to-seven-member committee to meet with the prime minister in Islamabad. “I will arrange the meeting within two-three days,” he said. The minister said that that he would convey the demands of the Hazara community to the prime minister. He announced payment of Rs 2.5 million as compensation – Rs 1.5 million of which would be paid by the Balochistan government – to the heirs of each victim.
Sheikh Rashid later called on Prime Minister Imran Khan and updated him on his meeting with the protesting Hazaras. Political situation of the country also came under discussion during the meeting, the PM Office said.
Provincial ministers Mir Zahoor Ahmed Buledi and Noor Mohammad Dummar and Deputy Commissioner Aurangzeb Badini also held talks with MWM leaders. However, the negotiations remained unsuccessful as the protesting leaders refused to call off their sit-in. Hazaras have faced persecution by extremists in both countries. Some Afghan Hazaras come to Pakistan for work in the winter, including at the coal mines in Balochistan.
