Taliban commanders publicly proclaim the slogan: “Tajiks to Tajikistan, Uzbeks to Uzbekistan, and Hazaras to Goristan”. Goristan means graveyard. In August 1998, in just a few days, the Taliban massacred eight thousand Hazaras in Mazari-Sharif simply because of their ethnic identity as Hazara people. Since 2002, the Hazara people of Afghanistan have suffered over 300 targeted massacres. Since 2015, the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISKP), affiliated with the Haqqani Network, has claimed responsibility for some of these massacres, giving the Taliban a way to deny responsibility, even though the Haqqani Network is part of the Taliban regime. To date, none of these crimes carried out against Hazara people has been investigated. These massacres all have the elements of the crime of genocide in Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention. They have led international organizations such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Genocide Watch to declare Genocide Alerts regarding the threat of genocide against the Hazara people of Afghanistan. Hazaras have been attacked in educational centres, places of worship, maternity hospitals, sporting facilities, public gatherings, and wedding halls. Under the Taliban rule since August 2021, genocidal attacks against Hazaras have increased significantly. A genocidal attack this September on a Hazara educational centre murdered 58 Hazara students. Yet the UN and the international press nearly always refuse to identify the victims as Hazaras and fail to note the ethnically and religiously targeted nature of the attacks. This is Genocide Denial. The current spate of systematic attacks, hate speech and dehumanising language such as infidels and outsiders directed against Hazara people have proven to have organisational elements and has been specifically targeting Hazara people across the country and in all aspects of their public lives. The Hazara people are enduring a continuous slow-motion genocide by attrition in Afghanistan. Urgent international action is needed to protect the Hazara people of Afghanistan. 2

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