The House of Representatives in the Australian Parliament this week accepted an important motion dealing with the serious threats to human rights in Afghanistan. The motion was endorsed in speeches by members of the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party, and the Nationals. Treasurer Jim Chalmers was present for the discussion.
The motion provided that the House:
(1) acknowledges with deep concern the ongoing persecution and discrimination faced by the Hazara people and other ethnic religious minorities under the Taliban;
(2) calls for the protection of all minorities in Afghanistan, as well as women and girls, noting no part of Afghanistan or Afghan society has been immune from violence or persecution; and
(3) recognises the valuable contributions of Hazara Australians to the cultural, social and civic life of our nation, and acknowledges that these contributions extend well beyond their own community.
This was a timely act of recognition. Since seizing power in August 2021 in Afghanistan, the Taliban have created one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The Taliban swiftly declared the country’s 2004 constitution invalid and dismantled the institutions that were designed to promote and protect the human rights of citizens.
Their systematic assault on human rights has affected every citizen. However, some groups stand out as victims of multilayered and intersectional discrimination and repression. The Taliban’s pervasive and systematic repression of women and girls is now widely described by human rights experts as a system of gender apartheid.
Other groups, such as the Hazaras, who have been persecuted historically on the grounds of their distinctive ethnic and religious identity (as they consist predominantly of Shi’a in a Sunni Muslim-majority country), are also the targets of this multilayered and intersectional repression at the hands of the Taliban regime as well as at the hands of other extremist groups such as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP).
The violence and exclusion they face has been methodically intensified by the overlap between the Taliban’s exclusionary worldview and appetite for institutionalised human rights repression. The severity and sustained nature of the persecution of the Hazaras by the Taliban and other extremist groups was recently examined by a group of prominent international lawyers in a report by the US-based New Lines Institute think-tank. The report found that there is “a reasonable basis to believe that the targeting of the Hazara in the past few years, for which the Taliban and IS-KP/Daesh have predominantly claimed responsibility, meets the legal criteria for the crime of genocide under Article II of the Convention”.
Arbitrary arrests, torture, and verbal abuse laced with ethnic and sectarian slurs turn the general policy of gender apartheid into a specific tool of ethnic persecution.
The Taliban’s repression of vulnerable groups reveals the deeper ideology of the Taliban regime that denies the basic human rights of every citizen, even including members of the Taliban regime itself. For the Hazaras, the Taliban’s rule combines a particularly intolerant form of Pashtun ethno-nationalism with an extremist interpretation of Sunni Islam. The hybridisation of these two exclusionary and violent ideologies provides a political and ideological framework for the persecution of Hazaras. Since 2021, Hazaras have been excluded from the Taliban interim government, and Hazara officials have been systematically removed from judiciary, military, and security forces. The lack of political voice and representation has left Hazaras with no meaningful recourse to protection or justice.
This vulnerability is most brutally exposed by the ongoing wave of sectarian terrorism. While many mass casualty attacks are carried out by ISKP – which actively campaigns against Hazaras as apostates – the Taliban’s consistent failure to protect the community makes them effectively complicit. Attacks are strategically focused on key symbols of Hazara social advancement, such as the September 2022 bombing at the Kaaj Educational Centre, which claimed the lives of 54 young Hazara girls and boys and injured more. Such acts systematically aim to dismantle the community’s hard-won progress in education and civil society achieved over the past two decades.
The effects of these violent attacks are further compounded by economic marginalisation and discrimination. The broader economic crisis, exacerbated by the Taliban’s policies banning women from most employment, impacts all Afghans. However, many reports show a pattern of exclusionary and discriminatory economic relations and practices that directly impact the Hazaras.
These include the forced eviction of Hazara families and the confiscation of their ancestral lands in provinces such as Daikundi, with property often redistributed to Taliban loyalists. Furthermore, the systematic diversion of crucial international humanitarian aid away from Hazara-populated areas deepens their poverty and undermines the ability of the most vulnerable families to survive. Hazara youth, who once leveraged education to overcome poverty and historical oppression, now find that discrimination blocks their prospects in education and recruitment in civil services. And Hazara women, who were highly active in civil society, media, and politics during the Republic era, now often face disproportionately harsh treatment, including arbitrary arrests, torture, and verbal abuse laced with ethnic and sectarian slurs, turning the general policy of gender apartheid into a specific tool of ethnic persecution. By targeting these women, the Taliban aim to break the resilience and intellectual spirit of the Hazara community.
The motion accepted by the Australian House of Representatives can help highlight that recognising the persecution of the Hazaras must be central to a credible and principled approach towards the Taliban rule on the part of Australia and other Western democracies. Recognising and addressing these complex, intersecting layers of oppression and holding the Taliban accountable must be part of a long-term and principled approach to supporting an inclusive and sustainable peace in Afghanistan.
