Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 9 May, Sayed ul-Shuhada High School in Kabul, Afghanistan was bombed, killing at least 85 people, mostly Hazara schoolgirls, and injuring another 147. The attack happened in the afternoon, when female students had classes at the school. There were three bombs: first one and then two more when the girls rushed out. The school is located in the majority Hazara Dashte Barchi neighbourhood of west Kabul. This is not the first horrendous attack. A year ago almost to the day, gunmen entered a maternity hospital and killed 24 women, 16 of whom were mothers, including three in the delivery room with unborn children.

Last week I met with members of the Hazara community in Western Sydney, from the Kateb Hazara Association, the Sydney University Afghan Society and the SABA Group, and they told me of the pain in the Hazara community here. Many of them fear for family members living in Dashte Barchi. For others, who have been victims of past trauma and persecution themselves, their pain explodes every time one of these incidents occurs. They are overwhelmingly refugees and children of refugees, and they are really struggling. I can't solve the problems in Afghanistan, but I can help them be heard. So I've committed to help them organise meetings with the Minister for Defence and the Minister for Education and Youth so they can talk about their mental health issues and their fear about what is happening in Afghanistan, and I'll do the same with the shadows. I would urge the government members to assist me in this.