Hundreds of protesters from Pakistan’s minority Shia Hazara community yesterday staged a demonstration in the southwestern city of Quetta against a government ban on road travel to Iran where they go for pilgrimage.
Men, women and children sat on a main road carrying placards and chanting slogans demanding the ban be lifted.
They also called for better security for pilgrims travelling to the holy sites in Iran and Iraq via Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, which borders Iran.
Pakistan imposed a ban on road trips to Iran after four suicide bombers struck two restaurants in the remote town of Taftan near the Iranian border last week, killing 24 pilgrims who were returning home.
A large number of Pakistani Shia Muslims travel to Iran via dangerous roads passing through the restive Baluchistan province, a battleground both for hardline Sunni extremists and ethnic Baluch separatists.
“We have staged this sit-in protest to urge the government to reopen the road route to Iran because everybody can’t afford an aeroplane ticket,” Daud Agha, a senior leader of the Shia community, told the media.
“We will not conclude our protest until the government decides positively about our demands,” Agha added.
