‘We can be a role model’: the activism of Hazara women in regional Australia

Goulburn Valley Afghan Women’s Association Shepparton co-founder Zara Khademi, who fled Afghanistan in the 1990s. Photograph: Supplied/The Guardian

Zara Khademi fled Afghanistan in the late 1990s when the Taliban attacked the capital of Kabul.

“They were looking for the Hazara people,” she says. “My daughter was four and my son was 18 months. We had to walk through the mountains at night until we reached the (Iranian) border.”