LAHORE: PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz will visit the Hazara community in Balochistan on Thursday and request it to bury the coal miners who were slain in a brutal attack.

“On the direction of Nawaz Sharif I’m going to my sisters and brothers (in Balochistan) with a request to hand over their dead to Allah Almighty. I am sure they will not reject my request. For the last four days the Hazara community has been calling the heartless in Islamabad,” she said in a tweet on Wednesday.

She asked the mourners not to wait for an “insensitive and heartless man” (Imran Khan), and appealed them to bury their dead. “May Allah elevate their ranks in the hereafter and grant you patience.”

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday urged the protesting members of Balochistan’s Shia Hazara community to bury the bodies of the miners killed in a brutal attack in Mach, promising he would visit them “very soon”.

On Sunday, armed attackers slit the throats of 11 miners in a residential compound near a mine site in Balochistan’s Mach coalfield area, filming the entire incident and later posting it online. The gruesome attack was claimed by the militant Islamic State group.

Since then, thousands of Hazaras have staged a protest along with coffins containing the miners’ bodies in the western bypass area in Quetta, while members of their community have also held protests across the country.

The protesters have said they will not bury the miners’ bodies until Prime Minister Imran meet them and the killers are brought to justice, continuing their protest on Wednesday for a fourth straight day.

Published in Dawn, January 7th, 2021