Hundreds of people took to the streets on Sunday, January 21, in multiple cities across the world, demanding the recognition of the genocide of ethnic Hazaras and gender apartheid in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
“Organisers and activists have coordinated widespread protests in 30 cities,” Asad Ahadi, one of the organizers in Indonesia, told KabulNow on condition of anonymity, adding, “Time is running out for Afghanistan and the world must take concrete measures to protect the Hazaras and women.” Ahmadi noted that more protests are expected to take place this week.
The mass demonstrations have erupted amid a wave of targeted attacks against the historically oppressed Hazara community. In recent years, Hazaras have been subjected to a series of attacks, targeting the community in education centers, wedding halls, sports centers, hospitals, mosques, workplaces, and on public transportation. Under Taliban rule, these attacks have intensified with no concrete protective measures from the authorities. According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), at least 49 Hazaras were killed and 88 others wounded between 13 October and 1 December 2023 alone in Kabul, Herat, and Baghlan.
Photos and videos on social media show scores of protestors with banners chanting “Stop Hazara Genocide,” as they march or gather in major cities, including Washington D.C. near the White House, Vancouver, Paris, Oslo, Stockholm, Munich, Madrid, Turin, São Paulo, Islamabad and more.
“Silence and passivity is not the solution,” 45-year-old Mohammad Hashim who joined a protest in Berlin, told KabulNow. “The world must know about the injustice and oppression against Hazaras and women under the Taliban watch… The world should not turn away.”
Hazaras, predominantly Shia Muslims, have been targeted by the Taliban and Islamic State—Khorasan Province, an ISIS affiliate, both of which view Hazaras as heretics. Many people, as well as experts and analysts, consider the ongoing attacks against the community as acts of genocide. According to the Genocide Watch, an organization dedicated to preventing genocide: “Under the Taliban in the 1990s, Hazaras were victims of at least nine genocidal massacres. The Taliban massacred between 2000 and 15,000 Hazaras in Mazar-e Sharif in 1998. The Taliban massacred hundreds more Hazaras in Bamyan when they blew up the stone Buddhas.” An earlier report by Human Rights Watch said that at least 700 Hazaras were killed or wounded by IS-KP in thirteen separate attacks between August 2021 and September 2022.
Similar protests were staged in 2022 in nearly 100 cities worldwide following a suicide attack at the Kaaj Education Center in Kabul on 30 September 2022 that killed 56 Hazara female students and teachers and injured over 100 others. Genocide Watch said that the “systematic attacks on Hazaras fulfill the elements of the definition of genocide.” Other international organizations like the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute also issued warnings of genocide against the Hazaras.
“The Hazaras have long faced systematic atrocities based on their membership in an ethnic and religious group,” Genocide Watch said in a statement. “The Hazaras of Afghanistan have endured nearly 300 attacks since 2002. These attacks have a long history. In the 1890s, the Hazaras faced genocide, slavery, and massive depopulation that killed sixty percent of Hazaras.”
It is a sentiment echoed by one of the protestors in Paris on Sunday. “For over a century, Hazaras have been subjected to genocidal massacres, systematic discrimination, and other atrocities in Afghanistan by Afghan rulers and non-state actors,” Fahim Maqsoodi told KabulNow. “We want the UN and other international bodies like the International Criminal Court to open an independent case to investigate the systematic killing and persecution of Hazaras and to prosecute its perpetrators.”
The protests, which have been staged intermittently since the Taliban takeover, have seen some success. For example, in early 2022, the Hazara Inquiry, a cross-party parliamentary inquiry was launched in the UK parliament by both Houses and experts to reveal atrocities against and promote justice for the Hazaras in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In November of that year, Dandenong City Council in southeast Melbourne, Australia became the world’s first government body to recognize the genocide of Hazaras in Afghanistan after a motion was tabled a month earlier.
Sunday protests also spoke against the Taliban’s mounting restrictions against women and girls, particularly on dress codes. Anger and frustration have been building up since early January when scores of women and girls, accused of “not wearing proper hijab”, were arbitrarily arrested and ill-treated by Taliban authorities in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, and Daikundi. UNAMA reported that Hazara and Tajik girls from certain parts of the capital were particularly targeted, adding that many were released after their family members signed a guarantee that the female relative would adhere to the hijab decree in the future.
“Hijab is only an excuse,” Zeba Painda, who participated in the protest in France, told KabulNow. “The Taliban want to completely erase women and girls from public life and resort to violence, abuse, and force if women resist.”
Since overtaking power more than two years ago, the Taliban have issued over 75 decrees, restricting women’s rights and freedoms, according to Human Rights Watch. Women and girls’ rights to education and employment are restricted and they are required to cover in a burqa and be accompanied by a male chaperone in public. Women and girls are also barred from parks, gyms, beauty parlors, public baths, and other social premises.
