[DAWN] Haji Abdul Qayyum Changezi, the head of Hazara Qaumi Jirga and a survivor of many Hazara massacres, still thinks there is a way to stop it. Earlier this month, in his Hazara Town office, he was surrounded by fellow survivors. A man had lost his entire family. "Yes all of them," the man shook his head and refused to say anything more. Here was a transporter who had lost all his business. An eight-year-old kid with a scar across his face who lost his mother in the Mastung bus massacre. "I was sitting in the front of the bus playing with my brother, my mother was at the back," was all he could remember. Homes in Hazra Town were full of teenagers who couldn't go to university and their parents who couldn't go to their jobs while amateurish looking gunnies sat on streets corners trying to do DIY security.Haji Changezi tapped on a pile of national Urdu dailies published from Quetta and pointed to headlines that he had highlighted; in various poetic forms inciting the murder of Shia Hazras. "Whenever these headlines appear, an attack on our community follows. Can anyone stop these headlines?" A young man in the office opened the Facebook page of a banned sectarian organization and played a clip from a rally held recently in Quetta stadium. A singer sang a composition declaring all Shias kafir. Speakers following him did the same in blood-curdling prose.
Liaqat Ali Hazara, the transporter said that he had approached the military authorities to resume his business. "Give it to us in writing that if one of your buses gets attacked you'll not protest again and sit on the streets with your coffins."
He is still considering the offer. "There are some drivers who are willing to drive my buses. They are saying if we are going to die sitting in our homes then we might as well die working. Also if you are in a moving bus maybe you have a better chance of survival."
Another young man complained that non-Hazara bus drivers had started refusing Hazara passengers. "They think we are a security threat. Sometimes they charge us extra."