Sectarianism is a historically deep rooted issue in Pakistan. People are put to death for their creeds and sects. Religious issue is a whole can of worms for Pakistani nation which cannot be thrown away. The religious diversities change the people into heretic by radical subcultures. A spate of murder takes place in the streets, malls, bazaars, mosques or churches.

Shias are targeted constantly by religious extremists across Pakistan. Their blood is shed with impunity by Islamic radicals. Shia minorities run a risk in every nook and cranny of Pakistan for their religious beliefs. Hence, the radical groups have turned to sworn enemy of Shias.

According to recent reports, a 50-year-old Shia doctor was gunned down outside a hospital on Wednesday in Karachi city of Pakistan while three Shia seminary students were also killed and two injured by gunmen on a motorcycle, all in the Gulistan-e-Johar area. On Tuesday a Shia homeopath was killed, and on Friday a prominent lawyer was murdered. While Karachi remains torn by political and criminal turf wars, mostly for control of extortion revenues from businesses, sectarian strife adds its own grisly aspect to the carnage. Criminal and political turf wars are closely intertwined; police allege that their attempts to catch criminals are almost always thwarted by powerful politicians or officials demanding the release of the accused or that investigations be dropped. Things were bad enough when the police only had the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) to deal with.

Given the broader context of sectarian and religious strife in the country, the murder of Shias amounts to a creeping genocide that has been ongoing for almost two decades. Karachi is home to numerous religious communities and sects, but many people from minority denominations are finding it impossible to live in the city anymore because sectarian killers deliberately target them, as opposed to criminals and political thugs who can be paid off.

Reports further say that Syed Nazeer Hussain Umrani, the professor of the Rawalpindi Hashmat Ali College, was seriously injured after two unidentified motorcyclists in Sadiqabad of Rawalpindi opened fire on him on Wednesday. According to police sources, Mr. Umrani was also serving as an imam - prayer leader - in city’s Qasr-e-Sajjad Imambargah. Late last month, three policemen were also killed outside an imambargah in the city’s Dhoke Syedan area.

The bombing in Abbas Town in March 2013 that killed 50 and injured hundreds of people in a primarily Shia neighborhood showed the extent to which Shias in the city are under threat and the hatred sectarian killers carry. Their goal is to eliminate a large minority population completely, since the Shia community is unlikely to give in to forced conversions and marriages.

The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), Jaish-ul-Islam and Ahlesunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ), formerly known as Sipa-e-Sahaba, openly advocate the murder of Shias. Neither has been taken on by the government in their strongholds in Punjab.

Quetta is one of the bloodiest cities for Hazara Shias where the death toll is on rise. Currently, going to bazaar, schools, universities, commuting or taking trips seem great risk for them.

Saleem Javed, a human rights activist from Quetta, said: “Today, the Hazara students would not go to universities and college because they are afraid they would be attacked. They have been attacked. They have been attacked on their buses; they have been attacked inside the university, outside the university. Even the girls have not been forgiven. They have also been attacked. This has created a sense of total helplessness that everybody is now thinking that ok, don’t think of education, don’t think about moving forward, the first thing is to protect your life.”

Reportedly, motorcyclists gunned down two men belonging to the Hazara Shia community on Sariab Road of Quetta city on Saturday night. The banned Jaish-ul-Islam claimed responsibility for the attack.

With a surge in violence in Balochistan, members of minority groups have increasingly sought shelter in other parts of the country. According to Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Vice Chairperson Tahir Hussain Khan, almost 30,000 members of the Hazara community have migrated in the last five years. Khan said that the flow of migration increased as nearly 1,000 members of the Hazara community have been killed in targeted attacks since 2009. He added that more than 10,000 Hindus have also fled the province as abductions-for-ransom have become routine over the last three years here.

The Hazara community has been confined to two localities in Quetta – a four-kilometer radius on Alamdar Road and an 11km area within Hazara Town – after the provincial government set up security checkpoints around these residential colonies.

The massacre of Shia passengers in 2012 was the worst example of systematic killings. In February 2012, an armed group boarded a bus in the north-western Kohistan region and asked to see the ID of every passenger. Noting they were Shias, the assailants, picked 25 passengers out and shot them execution-style, killing 18 including three children, and injuring another seven. Similar targeted killings of Shia Muslims have occurred in Balochistan and Gilgit while in years past Christian and Ahmadi communities have also been attacked by angry mobs often on the pretext of alleged blasphemy.

According to Rubab Mehdi Rizvi, Chair of the Imam Hussain Council, more than 21,000 Shia Muslims have been killed in the last three decades in Pakistan “for which not a single one of the killers has been brought to justice.”

Yet, the unchecked killings have raised wider questions about Pakistani society: about the spread of a cancerous sectarian ideology in a public that even just a decade ago seemed more tolerant, and about what might be spurring the growing audacity of the killers, some of whom are believed to have links to the country’s security services.

The murders in Quetta, involve remarkably little mystery. By wide consensus, the gunmen are based in Mastung, a dusty agricultural village 18 miles to the south that is the bustling local hub of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the country’s most notorious sectarian militant group.