Imran Khan's 'Naya Pakistan' continues to remain a nightmare for minorities

Islamabad, Jan 4: Around 11 coal miners were killed in the Mach area of Balochistan province of Pakistan on Jan 3, in an extremely cruel manner. The Islamic State (ISIS) militant group has claimed the responsibility of the gruesome act. The victims were members of a minority Shia community of Hazara. The miners who were killed, lived in a shared residential room near the coal mine where they worked.

 

The attack took place early in the morning, in the Mach area of Bolan district, which is around 100 km southeast of Balochistan’s capital of Quetta. The incident was described in the words that "The throats of all coal miners have been slit, after their hands were tied behind to their backs and the victims were blind folded."

 

The Pakistani PM Imran Khan, who acts nothing on ground to curb the increasing incidents of terrorism on Pakistani land, has only shared his condolences for the miners and their families through a tweet that “The condemnable killing of 11 innocent coal miners in Mach Baluchistan is yet another cowardly inhuman act of terrorism.”

 

 

The news about the incident spread rapidly around the masses through a video that was making rounds on Whatsapp groups that showed three bodies lying outside the room and the rest inside in pools of blood. The militant activities of the Islamic State against mainly the Shi’ite Hazara minority in the province were hushed down for almost a year and the miners' incident has come out as a break to their silence.

 

 

 

Last such attack on the Hazaras took place in April 2020, when a market suicide bombing killed 18 people, half of whom were Hazaras. The Hazaras have been frequently targeted by Taliban and Islamic State militants and other Sunni Muslim militant groups in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2013, three bombings killed more than 200 people in Hazara dominant regions in Quetta.

 

 

With such history of attacks on the minorities in Balochistan since such a long period of time, the Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has only been making tweets in an failed attempt to create an image of a savior. While Imran Khan noses into the internal matters of Indian minorities, he proves to be an incapable 'Wazir-e-Azam' to tackle the problems of minorities in Pakistan.

 

Besides, one of the reason behind Imran Khan's ignorance towards addressing the problems of Balochis is that Baluchistan is the focus of the $60-billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a transport and energy link planned between Western China and Pakistan’s Southern deep water port of Gwadar. This agenda is not all hidden.

 

No matter how much ever the Pakistan govt tries to hide the fact that these developments will occur with complete negligence to the Pakistani minorities, who are original inhabitants of Balochistan, it is very much out in open. It is highly illegitimate for a Prime Minister with such critical internal matters in hand to solve, to make unfounded statements about internal matters of neighbouring countries on international platforms.