‘NADRA, FIA have no record about ethnic groups’

• Farhatullah compares plight of Hazaras with Rohingya

ISLAMABAD: State Minister for Interior Affairs Talal Chaudhry on Thursday said that the government institutions have no record about migration of specific ethnic group to the foreign countries.

He stated this while responding to a Calling Attention Notice in the Senate regarding migration of about 70,000 people of the Hazara community of Balochistan to Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand and other countries due to threats.

The state minister said that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) have record about passport, visas and CNICs. “There is no specific category of information about the ethnic groups,” he said.

He said that Pakistan suffered a lot in war against terrorism and various small groups were targeted to distort international image of the country. The exact numbers of migrated people of specific ethnicity can’t be claimed, he said. There has been as how many people departed to foreign countries in specific period, he said.

Speaking on the plight of the Hazara community, Senator Farhatullah Babar likened the Hazaras of Balochistan to the Rohingya Muslims as both were fleeing from their countries in desperation. He said that if one was a Hazara he was marked for assassination. He said that Hazaras have been fleeing to Indonesia and Malaysia from where they have been seeking to travel by sea to Australia and Newland in search of safe places.

But lately the Australian government had put up newspaper advertisements announcing that it would no longer accept refugees arriving by boat. The Hazaras fleeing Balochistan are threatened to meet the fate of Rohingya Muslims and become food for the fish, he said.

He said that the plight of Hazaras was neither on the radar of the parliament nor of the political parties and they had been left to fend for themselves. “We have been raising voice for the Rohingyas but not for Hazaras,” he said and called for the setting up of a special committee of the Senate to address the issue in earnest.

Talking to the media, the PPP lawmaker said that the countries of the Far East to which Hazaras migrated did not allow them to work and their children could not attend schools. “If a generation of fleeing Hazaras remained illiterate it will only add to the pool from which militants draw recruits,” he said.