The Taliban follow the slogan, “The Tajiks to Tajikistan, the Uzbeks to Uzbekistan, and the Hazaras to the graveyard.”
The Afghanistan War Victims’ Voices, an NGO collaboration project, has confirmed that recent events and actions of the Taliban confirm their adherence to this policy and their ongoing genocidal policies towards the Shia Hazara in Afghanistan. Since the Taliban have taken power in Afghanistan, the Taliban government has consistently failed to protect the Shia Hazara community. Moreover, the government of the Taliban has outright rejected and persecuted the Hazara community, refusing them medical treatment, denying them access to food and water, killing and torturing them, robbing them of their property while allowing others to do the same with impunity, and forcing families out of their homes in acts of ethnic cleansing.
To this point the team of the Afghanistan War Victims’ Voices Organization (AWVV) has conducted an exploratory study of the bombing of the Kaaj Academy in West Kabul on September 30th and has verified that the Taliban not only are hiding the true number of victims of this attack, but also denying medical treatment to those wounded in the blast in a deliberate attempt to increase the number of fatalities among the Hazara community. Moreover, protests by the Hazara community and women of Afghanistan in response to the Kaaj Academy bombing on September 30th have been suppressed and dispersed by the Taliban with live fire.
AWVV has additionally learned that the Mohmmad Ali Jinnah Hospital in a region of approximately 1.5 million Hazaras has been defunded by the Taliban’s Ministry of Health. Further, we have verified that there is no more running water in the hospital, as it has been deliberately cut off by the Taliban. There is no petrol for the generator, no oxygen, and no medicine. The Taliban are using the denial of healthcare services as a mechanism of ethnic cleansing against the Hazara population by refusing medical care to those who are wounded in attacks against the population and by preventing those who have obtained visas from leaving Afghanistan for medical care in locations such as neighboring Iran.
In short, the Taliban are clearly entering a new phase of their plan to adhere to their slogan “the Hazaras to the graveyard.”
Per Dr. Gregory Stanton of the organization Genocide Watch and world’s leading expert, the Shia Hazara are a unique ethnic population in Afghanistan with their own unique and distinct dialect, culture, and religious beliefs that threaten the Taliban’s goal of absolute, repressive authoritarian rule, and hence are targeted by the Taliban and ISIS-K, who work in coordination with each other to target and kill Hazaras. Attacks specifically target Hazara hospitals and children and are thus crimes against humanity, and because these attacks’ purpose is to destroy the Hazara ethnic and religious identity, social and neighborhood structure, these acts are also acts of genocide.
AWVV calls upon the international community to investigate, report upon, and ultimately stop the genocide of the Hazaras with the utmost haste before it is too late to do so.
Please note that the Afghanistan War Victim Voices is collaborating with the World Hazara Council.
Sincerely,
The Afghanistan War Victims’ Voices Team
