Shias end protests over killings of miners
PAKISTANI mourners buried last Saturday (9) the bodies of 11 slain coalminers who had been put on a highway in Quetta for six days in an anti-government protest.
The miners, from the minority Shi’ite Hazara sect, were killed on January 3 by Daesh (Islamic State) militants in their shared residential room, after which mourners refused to bury them to demand better protection from sectarian attacks.
Tens of thousands attended the funeral in a cemetery of the southwestern city, where more than 500 other Hazaras have also been buried in more than a decade of attacks.
The community’s refusal to bury the bodies is symbolic in Pakistan, where according to Islamic culture people should be buried within 24 hours, before the next sunset. The Quetta sitin, which continued through freezing nights, sparked protests in other cities demanding that Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan visit the mourners.
Last Friday (8), Khan called that “blackmail”, drawing widespread criticism by activists, opposition parties and others on social media.
But the countrywide sit-ins began to disperse after the government and protesters reached an agreement last Friday. It included security guarantees for the Hazaras and that mourners bury the bodies before the prime minister visited them.
After the burial, Khan travelled to Quetta where he met families close to the protest site. He told them the attack on the miners was meant to stoke conflict between the two major sects of Islam, Sunnis and Shi’ites, to destabilise Pakistan.