January 10, 2021
A week after one of the bloodiest massacres of innocent civilians in Balochistan prompted a wave of protests across Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s latest choice of words has badly exposed his failure to grasp the reality.
“No premier of any country should be blackmailed like this,” remarked Khan on Friday in response to the protestors demanding his presence in Quetta before eleven corpses of Shia Hazara Muslims are finally laid to rest.
The protestors had put forward a largely innocent plea after years of recurring attacks on their community members. Any visitor to Quetta’s Behesht-e-Zainab cemetery will find it hard not to be emotionally touched or outraged, given the tragic accounts of the ‘Hazara’ martyrs noted on one tombstone after another across the sprawling ground. Widows and young orphans routinely assemble here every day notably on Thursdays to mourn their departed loved-ones. Across neighbourhoods such as Quetta’s Hazara town or th