The Liberal candidate for Bruce co-authored a parliamentary submission suggesting the Hazara community in Afghanistan was not persecuted on the basis of its ethnicity, contradicting the Australian government and drawing rebuke from international human rights groups.
Zahid Safi co-authored a submission to a 2021 parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s involvement in the Afghanistan war, which incorrectly cited a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report to allege Hazara “warlords” had “cut the breasts of women” and watched “live delivery of pregnant women” during the early 1990s. The 2005 HRW report does not mention these acts.
The allegations led members of the Hazara community, which has a significant presence in the electorate of Bruce, to lodge their own dissenting submissions to the inquiry, alleging the claims relied on “racist tropes” and sought to erase the “well-documented persecution of an entire ethnic group”.
Safi did not directly comment on those allegations when contacted by Guardian Australia, instead stating he was “a staunch advocate for freedom of religion or belief for all individuals worldwide”.
“As someone who fled the country because of war, I know everyone under the Taliban suffered, and my advocacy for human rights is shaped by those experiences,” Safi said.
The Senate submission co-authored by Safi said, in reference to conflict in Afghanistan, “that victims of war are not based on ethnicity”.
“The victims of war are targeted based on ideology,” the joint submission said. “This means, whoever opposes the Taliban and their ideology, is perceived as the Taliban’s enemy. Therefore, their perceived animosity is not based on ethnic division.”
A 2022 briefing paper on Afghanistan, prepared by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, states the Hazara community are an ethnic group that represents an estimated 10-20% of the country’s population. It states the Hazara face “a high risk of harassment and violence (…) on the basis of their ethnicity and sectarian affiliation”.
The department notes the Hazara community has been historically persecuted, noting it was subjected to “the worst single recorded massacre in the country’s recent history” in August 1998, when the Taliban, a predominantly Pashtun organisation, “massacred at least 2,000 Hazaras”.
The submission co-authored by Safi also expressed frustration that other ethnic groups from Afghanistan had allegedly been “sidelined” by the Australian government and media, due to an alleged prioritisation of the Hazara community.
“Pashtuns have had the most casualties compared to others and this needs to be acknowledged by the Australian government as the 20 years’ war existed mostly in the Pashtun provinces,” the submission stated.
Thousands of Hazaras who fled Afghanistan after persecution from the Taliban in the 1990s settled in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs, within the federal electorate of Bruce. The electorate is also home to other Afghan ethnic groups.
Safi said: “A full and fair reading of my submission makes clear that I advocated for every single living individual at risk from the national atrocity and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan under the Taliban.”
Guardian Australia has spoken to other co-authors of the report who stand by its claims.
Bruce is held by the incumbent Labor MP, Julian Hill. A margin of 6.6% at the 2022 election has been reduced to 5.3% after a redistribution. .
The submission has been criticised by HRW’s Afghanistan researcher, Fereshta Abbasi, who accused the authors of misrepresenting a report by the organisation to imply brutal violence in Kabul between 1992 and 1995 was conducted exclusively by Hazaras.
“Among these atrocities were those carried out by ethnically Pashtun militia forces and ethnically Hazara militia forces against civilians of these respective ethnic groups, in tit-for-tat kidnappings, rapes and killings,” Abbasi said.
“Attributing them exclusively towards Hazaras is misleading. It is our finding that these attacks were in fact based on ethnicity – in that the victims were targeted because of their ethnicity.”
A dissenting submission made by members of the Hazara community, who asked for the Senate to withhold their names, said the submission co-authored by Safi had “the effect of amplifying racist tropes”.
“It highlights the actions of a few actors in a past civil war, drawing attention to ethnicity to imply the guilt of entire ethnic groups, or to imply that people who belong to ethnic groups other than Pashtun are violent in nature,” the dissenting submission said.
A separate dissenting report by two academics specialising in Afghanistan at La Trobe University and Deakin University, along with solicitors and PhD candidates, accused the submission of containing “a series of factually incorrect statements and racist prejudices”.
“Instead of acknowledging the historical and current persecution of the Hazaras, and the significant risks faced by Hazaras in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime; the authors deliberately blame the Hazaras for the general violence and human rights abuses that were perpetrated during several phases of the war in Afghanistan,” the academics and lawyers said.
