UN Forum on Minority Issues - The Hazara People Thank you, Chairperson. Excellencies, member states and participants - I thank the United Nations for sponsoring this important forum at this critical time. I am Sitarah Mohammadi, the spokesperson for the World Hazara Council. I am a woman from one of the most persecuted peoples in the world, the Hazara people, an ethnic and religious minority that have been facing systematic persecution and genocide in Afghanistan. The Hazara people are at high risk of continuing genocide under the current Taliban regime, who are predominately ethnic Pashtun and extremists Sunni Muslims. The Hazara people make up roughly 25-30% of the total population of Afghanistan. Hazara people are one of the largest refugee groups in the world. For over a century, Hazara people have been among Afghanistan's strongest supporters of democracy, freedom, progressive thinking, and the pursuit of education. Afghanistan is a country of minorities, with none of its ethnic groups making up a majority. However, the Hazara people, predominantly Shia Muslims, are a religious minority in a Sunni Muslim majority Afghanistan. The Hazara people have long faced relentless, systematic, genocidal massacres based on our ethnic and religious identity, and for our democratic and liberal values. We have endured systematic marginalization, discrimination, and persecution under the Pashtun rulers since the late 19th century. The Hazara people have been collectively subjected to slavery, systematic eviction from our ancestral homes and lands, and genocidal massacres. In the late 19th century, the Pashtun ruler Abdul Rahman waged a brutal war against the Hazara people, which included bloody massacres, looting and pillaging of our homes, enslavement and the transfer of Hazara land to friendly tribes. Historians have estimated that Abdul Rahman's massacres killed 62% of Afghanistan's Hazara population. Persecution of Hazaras continued in the twentieth century. Until the 1970s, the Afghan government did not allow Hazara people any access to higher education, especially in universities that trained candidates for army and government jobs. The killing of Hazara people has been preached as a key to paradise by some Sunni Muslim clerics. In the 1990s, there were at least nine genocidal massacres of Hazaras by the Taliban regime. 1