Assyrian Genocide

[Joseph]

GENOCIDE: TURKEY'S DARK 'SECRET' RESONATING THE AIRWAVES
Rosie Malek-Yonan

Assyrian International News Agency
March 12 2008

Los Angeles (AINA) -- With the world's attention focused on the
battlegrounds of Belgium and France, under the protective mask of
WWI, the systematic extermination of Assyrians, Pontic Greeks and
Armenians in Ottoman Turkey was carried out by Sultan Abdul-Hamid II,
and the Young Turks, Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Djemal Pasha,
the hallmark of the first Genocide of the 20th century.

Today in Turkey, openly discussing or writing about genocide and
holocaust carries a heavy punishment including imprisonment. The fear
instilled in Turkish society is implemented in an effort to conceal
a nearly century-old dark chapter in its Ottoman past.

While freedom of speech and uncensored dialog about these genocides
are heavily suppressed, the dialog is now slowly unfolding elsewhere
in the democratic free world and the west. Just last week one such
dialog was broadcast via the airwaves of Australia's National Radio.

I was invited by a producer of Turkish descent to speak about the
Assyrians and the Assyrian Genocide on the program Triple J, the
National Youth Network of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

As an Assyrian, I found it very encouraging to have received an
invitation from a Turkish producer to speak about a subject that is
virtually taboo and unlawful in her own country.

But as I suspected, in no time the inevitable occurred.

In what is becoming a predictable and common behavior (AINA
10-30-2007, 11-20-2007), Turkish hackers once again attacked my
book's website. This latest incident trailed on the heels of last
week's radio broadcast. This is the fifth such attack on the website
of The Crimson Field, a book I wrote about the Assyrian Genocide.

If the string of assults in the past several months by Turkish hackers
against Assyrian websites, including that of the Assyrian Academic
Society, is meant to intimidate Assyrians from speaking about the
Genocide, obviously, these tactics on the part of the hackers are
futile.

Today's Assyrians still carry with them memories and the wounds
of those losses. And yet they are expected to remain quiet. When
that expectation is not met, they encounter aggressive demands and
intimidation to keep silent. The Assyrian nation will never remain
silent.

Terrorization and bullying will not keep a nation silent when two
out of every three Assyrians were murdered in the genocide and mass
ethnic cleansing orchestrated by the Ottoman government in the early
part of the 20th century.

What I find inexcusable is when decent members of society,
irrespective of ethnicity, remain complacent with a do-nothing
attitude, contributing to the cycle of fanaticism and odium in regards
to the question of the Assyrian Genocides of not only last century,
but also the ongoing violence towards that nation particularly in
Iraq since the beginning of the 2003 war.

Rosie Malek-Yonan is an Assyrian actor, director and author of The
Crimson Field. She is an outspoken advocate of issues concerning
Assyrians, in particular bringing attention to the Assyrian Genocide
and the plight of today's Assyrians in Iraq since the U.S. lead
invasion of Iraq in 2003. On June 30, 2006, she was invited to testify
on Capitol Hill regarding the genocide and persecution of Assyrians in
Iraq by Kurds and Islamists. She is on the Board of Advisors at Seyfo
Center in Holland that exclusively deals with the Assyrian Genocide
issue. She has acted opposite many of Hollywood's leading actors and
has received rave reviews both as an actor and director. Most recently,
she played the role of Nuru Il-Ebrahim, opposite Reese Whitherspoon
in New Line Cinema's "Rendition", directed by Oscar winning director
Gavin Hood, which will be released in 2007.

[Joseph]

Our Assyrian brothers and sisters

Assyrian International News Agency

Assyrians Demonstrate Against Turkish Prime Minister's Arrival in Stockholm
Posted GMT 4-2-2008 22:18:26
Stockholm (AINA) -- A group of Assyrians and Armenians gathered today outside the palace of the Swedish King in Stockholm ahead of the arrival of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The demonstrators carried Assyrian and Armenian flags and demanded that Turkey acknowledge the genocides of Assyrians, Greeks and Armenians, which took place between 1914-1918.

On April 17 the Swedish parliament will vote on two bills calling for an official Swedish acknowledgment of the genocide of Assyrians. Mr. Erdogan is expected to underline to Swedish politicians that his country cannot accept any charges of genocide.

[Joseph]

See the text in bold

http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=552&catID=17

Since 1967 Christians from the Middle East have been settling in a Stockholm city suburb. Flowing in from Turkey, Syria and more recently Iraq, these immigrants refer to themselves as the 'world's oldest Christian people'. This year, however, fewer Iraqis have been admitted into Sweden after claims by the government that the conflict in Iraq has stopped. Those who have made it over the border talk to Olivier Truc about why this isn't true

Thursday April 3rd 2008


Christian Iraqi refugees in Sweden pray for a priest killed in their homeland. Photograph: Jacob Silberberg

Despite repeated warnings over the public address system the crowd swarmed onto the pitch at the Södertälje stadium. It was more than they could resist. Their football team, Assyriska FF, had just beaten Östersunds FK 4-2, securing promotion to Sweden’s premier league. That was last autumn.

In the stands, mustachioed men wearing dark suits and white, open-necked shirts played with their prayer beads. Behind them, two enthusiastic reporters were covering the event in Syriac, an Aramaean dialect, for Södertälje’s Assyrian channel, Suroyo TV, which is beamed by satellite all over the Middle East.

On the pitch itself, jubilant youths waved flags decorated with a map of Mesopotamia or a four-branched blue star with a yellow spot at its centre and red, white and blue flames blazing outwards, the colours of a once powerful empire, the cradle of civilisation, now divided between Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria. They are the proud descendants of the "world’s oldest Christian people".

But the setting for this celebration was a sports ground in Sweden, and strangely it could hardly have happened elsewhere. Over the past 40 years many Middle Eastern Christians have settled in Södertälje, an industrial district in Stockholm’s suburbs. The first ones arrived in 1967 when, at the request of the World Council of Churches and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sweden accepted 200 stateless Christians from a refugee camp in Lebanon.

Many more have followed. They are so well integrated that they have their own football teams and members of parliament. Their successful integration is held up as an example in Sweden, though they have not forgotten their origins. The last time Assyriska FF made it into the premier league the team organised a minute’s silence before the first match of the season, paying tribute to the victims of the Armenian genocide in 1915 in full view of Swedish television. The Turkish authorities protested. "Football and politics go hand-in-hand here," says a supporter. Some even dream of the rebirth of the Assyrian nation.

The first waves of immigrants came from Turkey and Syria, but in recent years they have flocked here from Iraq. "Sweden welcomed 20,000 refugees in 2006, with twice as many in 2007 and mostly from Iraq," says Anders Lago, the Social-Democrat mayor of Södertälje. The pressure on Södertälje nurseries, schools and housing is nearing breaking point, with some three-roomed flats accommodating up to 15 refugees.

The number of Iraqis being allowed to stay in Sweden has now dropped. The Swedish Migration Board has turned down three-quarters of all applications this year, whereas the previous year it accepted three out of four. The board has justified its change of policy by claiming that armed conflict in Iraq has ceased. This prompted widespread criticism from human rights organisations, their fears being confirmed by the discovery last month of the body of the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Faraj Rahho, who had been abducted on February 29.

In a large flat in Ronna, a neighbourhood of Södertälje now known as Little Baghdad, the Solrosen organisation helps families with children. Nursel Awrohum has a massive workload. As with most first-generation Assyrian immigrants, she is from Midyat, a town in eastern Turkey with a Christian majority, not far from Qamishli, a Syrian town also with a predominantly Christian population, where many of Södertälje’s Syrian Christians originated. "The council schools are packed," she says. At the Solrosen centre, children are learning Swedish while their parents are taught to cope with the authorities and Swedish society in general.

Amir and Nadia are waiting for a decision on their cases. One day in Baghdad, Amir, a Chaldean barber, found a For Sale notice on his front door. His father was murdered shortly afterwards. Then in February 2007 Amir was kidnapped. He has photographs of himself, gagged and covered in bruises, with a pistol held to his head and a dagger pointed at his throat. His brother finally managed to find the $15,000 demanded for his ransom. The family left the country and moved to Sweden, paying a smuggler $15,000 for each person.

Nadia, who defines herself as Chaldean, arrived here from Baghdad in 2007. Masked men had kidnapped, beaten and tortured her 23-year-old son. She had to pay $25,000 to prevent him being turned into "mincemeat", as they threatened. When they let him go they gave him a note saying: "Leave everything behind or we will rape your 18-year-old girl." Nadia fled to Sweden, where one of her daughters was already living. "In Baghdad, we heard that in some mosques the imams were saying there was no point in buying houses from Christians because they would be leaving the country anyway."

Though their numbers are dropping steadily there are still about 700,000 Christians living in Iraq (3% of the population). Two thirds of them are Catholics – mainly Chaldean, Syriac or Aramaean Catholics.

"Even though we cannot accommodate them properly, because there is so much demand, the refugees from Iraq still want to come here, because what they are looking for above all is security," says Awrohum. "And for them security means family, and people with the same language and background." They all want to live in Södertälje, where almost a quarter of the 80,000 inhabitants are Christians from the Middle East.

"In the past two years Södertälje has taken more Iraqi asylum seekers than the US," says Sait Yildiz, a town councillor and one of the leaders of the Assyrian Federation in Sweden. "I quite understand why the Swedes are a little bitter.

"In a way everyone expects the Iraqis arriving now to integrate easily, in view of our past success," says Aydin Aho, the manager of the Assyriska FF football club. Aho himself is a typical example of this process. He was born in Midyat in 1972, arriving in Södertälje two years later with the biggest wave of migrants.

"I was part of the first generation to grow up here and, like my contemporaries, I grew up with the federation and the holiday camps where we all got together. Football was a social thing," he explains.

"But the Swedish welfare state is not what it used to be," Aho adds, "and the churches and federation no longer play the same role. There isn’t the same sense of solidarity. Now there’s a serious risk that the Iraqis will remain second-class citizens."

[Joseph]

http://www.aina.org/articles/amitaatt.htm

Assyrian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey and Adjacent Turkish Territories
By Anahit Khosroeva
This is an exerpt from the book Assyrian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey and Adjacent Territories, by Anahit Khosroeva.

Throughout the history of the world, namely the 20th century, there have been numerous wars and much genocide to go along with them. So, the 20th century has entered into history as a century of genocides. In the history of mankind it had never occurred before that so many nations be subjected to physical extermination or the danger of it. The reality of the genocide has been one of the worst acts throughout the history of mankind.

The word "genocide" originally comes from the combination of the ancient Greek word "genos", meaning people or folk, and the Latin word "caedere", meaning slaughtering or destroying. The term "genocide" first appeared in scientific literature and political lexicon in 1944, with the right of authorship pertaining to Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent. This invention of Lemkin's is mainly due to two tragedies of the 20th century : the genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Turkey during World War I, and the holocaust of Jews in Fascist Germany during World War II1. As Lemkin has truly noticed, those were not the ordinary carnages or slaughters, but, qualitatively, a new phenomenon, which required a fundamentally new approach and assessment, and a new scientific definition. As a term and definition of crime, genocide was accepted by various international organizations, and first and foremost - by the United Nations, the most authoritative international body of today. On December 9, 1948 the General Assembly of UN adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which is an international document of historical significance.

The International Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on December 9, 1948 set the United Nations definition of genocide

General Assembly Resolution 260A (III) Article 2

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such :

1. Killing members of the group

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Today it is very well-known sad fact that the first genocide of the history, which took place ninety two years ago was the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Turkey. But during the same period together with Armenians, some non-Turkish nations were subjected to or faced the risk of genocide, also. Let's particularly mention the Assyrians. Who are they ?

The Assyrians are one of the most ancient nation of the world, whose ancestors stood at the cradle of the world civilization and made a great contribution to the development of world culture. More than two and a half thousand years have passed since the fall of the Assyrian kingdom (605 B.C.). The descendants of Assyrians, continuing to live on their historical land in ancient Betnahrain, which occupies the territory between the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean Sea, Lake Urmia and the deserts of Mesopotamia, were consistently oppressed by Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Ottoman Turks and Kurds. Now this long-suffering people have refuged on the boundaries of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria - on a limited territory of the Upper Mesopotamia.

During their centuries-old history the Assyrian nation passed a severe way of struggle for existence and went through quite a few fateful moments. In the second half of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century they were subjected to the oppressions carried out by Turkish authorities and fought against the Ottoman dictatorship. But the terrible ordeals that this nation underwent during World War I were unprecedented throughout the history of mankind. In 1914-1918, during World War I unleashed by the Great Powers, the traditional Turkish destructive policy reached its zenith. The Assyrians subjected to the severe Turkish yoke were murdered and died on the ways of deportation in the deserts of the Middle East.

What were the causes of the Assyrian genocide and was it possible to avoid it ? In order to understand this we need to have some knowledge about the era of the late Ottoman Empire. Let's see why and how the genocide of the Assyrians happened in this area ?

At the end of the 19th century the Ottoman Empire was a multinational state, in which along with Turks lived Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Bosnians, Jews, Serbs, Kurds, and other nations. All the political, military and spiritual power belonged to the Turks and only served toward their interests. Under the circumstances, the Turks only managed to maintain the authority by violence. It was not accidental that the policy of slaughters, which scope increased in the 20th century and rose to the level of state policy, presented the most critical feature of the internal political and national life of the Ottoman Empire and the principal weapon in solving the national problems. Hence, the history of the Ottoman Empire of the 19th and early 20th centuries appears an infinite series of slaughters, tortures and demeaning the dignity of the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and the other non-Turkish peoples of the Empire.

At the end of the 19th century a number of Assyrian villages could be found in the Eastern parts of the Ottoman Turkey : in the Hakkari sanjak of the vilayet (region) of Van, in the vilayets of Erzerum, Diyarbekir, Bitlis, Kharberd (Harput) and Sebastia (Sivas) in Western Armenia, as well as on the territory of Lake Urmia in Iran, Mosul in Iraq and in the north-western regions of Syria. More than one million Assyrians with common language, culture and national traditions lived there. By their social and religious characteristics they were divided into several groups. In terms of religion Assyrians were divided into Nestorians, Chaldeans, Jacobites and Orthodox believers. Socially they were divided into two large castes : Ashirets (independent tribes) and Rayas (the subordinate people), who were mainly engaged in farming and cattle breeding. Ashirets paid only nominal taxes to the Turkish government, but Rayas constantly suffered from its pillages and lived in extremely poor conditions : they were almost starving, exposed to Kurdish forays and often were forced to serve in the Turkish army.

Many Assyrians studied in Turkish educational institutions, but getting the corresponding certificates could not fill public positions. They did not even have an opportunity to economically develop their regions. Turkish authorities dissolved the Assyrians among other nations in order to deprive them of the possibility of joining and putting up a united front. Eventually, as the subsequent historical events showed, the Assyrians suffered the same cruel fate as the Armenians and other minorities living under the control of the Ottoman Turkey.

In 1876, Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1842-1918) rose to the Ottoman throne, who governed with iron hand for 33 years, up until 1909. He kept in fear and horror everyone, both his advocates and opponents, all the peoples, even the Turks. The years of his reign went down in the history of the Ottoman Empire as years of "zulum" - horror and autocratic dictatorship. He introduced individual and mass murders into the Ottoman political "culture", as the best method to settle the problems the Empire faced. Mass murders of the non-Turkish peoples in the Empire a component of the new political "culture" by Abdul Hamid. It is known that the pivotal idea of Abdul Hamid's external and internal policies was Pan-Islamism, which aimed at joining together around Turkey all the countries and territories populated with Mohammedans, by no means excepting the oppressions of non-Turkish nations and repression of national liberation movements. Military and political authorities, Kurdish Hamidiye cavalry units, and Muslim mobs all participated in the crime. In this period along with hundreds of thousands of Armenians, tens of thousands of Assyrians also fell a victim to the mass slaughters, which were organized based upon this very political intentions.

In October 1895 the mass massacres of Assyrians started in Diyarbekir and, afterwards, spread everywhere in the Empire. The Assyrian slaughters reached unprecedented levels : horrible events happened in many places, during which a great number of people emigrated, were forcedly converted to Islam or murdered. About 100 thousand Assyrians from 245 Christian villages were Islamized2. Thousands of Assyrian young girls and women were forced into Turkish and Kurdish harems.

On October 20, 1895 in Amid (Diyarbekir) slaughters of Christians were perpetrated by Turkish and Kurdish rabble. The Assyrian Church of The Blessed Virgin gave refuge to many Christians : Assyrians, Armenians, and Greeks. Fortunately, this church was not exposed to aggressions which can hardly be said about the Assyrian villages most of which were ruined and plundered by Kurds. During those dire days several Assyrians went to their clerical leader suggesting making Armenians go out of The Blessed Virgin Church in order not to draw down Turk's anger. In response to this request the Assyrian priest answered to his people : "The people who cross themselves will stay in church to the end. Should we be killed, we will be killed together"3. 119 villages in Diyarbekir region were scorched out and ruined. 6 thousand Christian families, about 30 thousand people were killed4.

The massacres of the Assyrians were continuing in every region of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the 19th century as a result of the massacres organized by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the Ottoman Empire along with 300 thousand Armenians 55 thousand Assyrians also fell a victim to the Turkish dictatorship5. During the Armenian slaughters these brutalities perpetrated towards the Assyrians added new pages to the bloody history of the Ottoman Empire. These were the total massacres, genocidal by nature. In fact the 19th century and especially the dreadful events of its last decade had baneful consequences for the Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire paving the way for even greater disasters.

So, the Ottoman Empire entered the 20th century as a backward dictatorial state, which organized mass slaughters of the nations inhabiting the Empire. The crisis, which involved the political, economic and social systems, still deepened. The massacres exacerbated the situation and bared the vices of the Ottoman state. In the eyes of all the peoples of the Empire, even in the eyes of the Turkish people, Sultan Abdul Hamid was an odious person, the symbol of their misfortunes, violence and torture. The idea of riddance of the bloodthirsty sultan was growing and maturing. The Young Turks were the ones to effect it. On July 23, 1908 the Committee of Union and Progress (Ittihat ve Terakki) organized a coup. Sultan Abdul Hamid was deprived of power ; in 1909 he was dethroned.

[Joseph]

2

The Young Turks came onto Turkish arena under the slogans of the French Revolution : "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". All the nations in the Empire, Moslems or Christians, welcomed the overthrow of the "red sultan" with enthusiasm. The people believed in that a new era in the history of the Ottoman Empire had dawned. Yes, shortly after, it turned out, that the Young Turks were well disguised ardent nationalists, who continued the policy of oppressions and slaughters, carried out by the preceding sultans. They were advocates of the idea of assimilation of all the nations of the Empire to create a pure Turkish nation, never even stopping before mass slaughters in order to achieve that goal.

As Henry Morgenthau, the American Ambassador to Turkey 1913-1916, says : "The Young Turks were not a government ; they were really an irresponsible party, a kind of secret society, which by intrigue, intimidation, and assassination, had obtained most of the state"6.

It was stated in the Young Turks' party program : "Sooner or later all the nations under Turkish control will be turned into Turks. It is clear that they will not convert voluntarily and we will have to use force"7. During one of the secret meetings a Young Turkish ideologist Dr. Nazeem said : "The massacre is necessary. All the non-Turkish elements, whatever nation they belong to, should be exterminated"8.

So, as we can see, the figures changed, new rulers came, the policy persisted. And the problem of minorities, racial and religious, had been to a large extent solved by the simple method of extermination9.

On August 1, 1914 World War I broke out. World War I was a most tragic episode in the history of mankind, which, certainly, didn't go past the Assyrian nation. The Ottoman Turkey officially joined in the war on October 29, 1914. Turks thought that participation in the war will considerably raise Turkey's authority, satisfy their vanity and dignity. In fact this war was a good opportunity for Young Turks to test the viability of the all-Turkish ideas in practice, to realize their aggressive and wild plans, which met with support among the military-feudal, bourgeois, ittihatic-chauvinistic elite. Talaat Pasha, Turkish Minister of Interior, in a conversation with Dr. Mordtman, the dragoman of the German Embassy in Instanbul, said : "Turkey is intent on taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention"10. A central committee member Union and Progress Bahaeddin Shakir told almost the same : "We are in war, there is no threat of intervention by Europe and the Great Powers, and the world press either will not be able to voice a protest. Even if we do not succeed, the problem will become an accomplished fact, the voices will calm down, and no one will dare to express a protest. We should make use of this exceptional situation as much as possible. This kind of opportunity is not always available ..."11.

The subsequent events showed that Turks really were not afraid of the Great Powers' intervention and perpetrated massacres of a number of nations in the Ottoman territory. The Assyrians also did not elude the mass slaughters and forced emigration. The genocide of the Assyrians was perpetrated with unspeakable brutality. From May, 1915 mass murders and deportation of the Armenians and Assyrians began in the regions of Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Erzerum, Kharberd, Sivas and Van. The expelled Assyrians, attended by armed detachments of Turks, were exiled to the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia.

The American Ambassador H. Morgenthau says : "When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race ; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact"12.

The extermination of the Christians in Diyarbekir was controlled by the head of that region Reshid Bey. The Assyrians of Mardin, Midyat and Jezire regions were especially badly hit by the Turkish massacres. The priest of local Chaldean Assyrians Joseph Naayem reported that "since April 8, 1915 horrible massacres had taken place : Turks gathered men above 16, beat, tortured, killed them, and afterwards put turbans on their heads and photographed them in order to prove the world in future that Christians oppressed Mohammedans13.

In September 1916 the American periodical "Martyred Armenia" translated from the "Original Arabic" an article by an Arab eyewitness of massacres, Fayez El Ghosein, where the author adverted to the slaughters of the Assyrians in Diyarbekir : "In Midyat and Mardin an order was issued to murder only Armenians, and not to disturb the members of all the other communities. Learning about the misfortune of their brothers (the Armenians) the Assyrians immediately took a position in three villages close to Midyat and rebuffed the Turkish army exhibiting bright examples of valour. ...The Assyrians fully recognized that they were dealing with a deceitful state, which will tomorrow withdraw the promise of not disturbing them and will strike more badly those whom it had granted a pardon yesterday"14.

Jevded Bey, the governor of the region of Van, a person with a number of negative characteristics, who was a master of misdeeds, conspiratorial plans and at the same time was specialized in lying and shamming, had a "butchers' battalion" comprised of 8,000 soldiers. Jevded organized horrible massacres of the Assyrians in this region never seen before. One of the striking examples of this was the terrible slaughter organized in Hakkari region in spring 1915, where Turks murdered about 60 thousand Assyrians. Then during the following years about 70 thousand Assyrians were annihilated : some of them were murdered, others starved to death or were killed in the battles against Mohammedans.

In early June 1915 mass slaughters of Assyrians took place also in the northern part of region of Van. The village Qochanis, which was considered the Assyrians' clerical leader Mar-Shimoun's residence, was totally destroyed. The patriarchy building was scorched out.

On June 30, 1915 Leslie A. Davis, the American Consul in Harput 1914-1917, wrote to US Ambassador H. Morgenthau : "Turks have found another way of exterminating the Christians - forced emigration. On June 18 it was publicly announced that all the Armenians and Assyrians should leave Harput within five days"15.

Hundreds of children were bayoneted by the Turks and thrown into the Euphrates, and how men and women were striped naked, tied together in hundreds, shot, and then hurled into the river. In a loop of the river near Erzinghan, ...the thousand of dead bodies created such a barrage that the Euphrates changed its course for about a hundred yards16.

Unfortunately, during the World War I the Assyrian massacres were carried out also on the territory of Iran, which had proclaimed itself a neutral country on November 2, 1914. On the Iranian side of the border a catastrophe took place during five months of Ottoman occupation in 1915 (January to May). Kurdish tribes and Ottoman troops moved in to an area characterized by anarchy. The Ottoman occupation of the Urmia was very bloody and the atrocities grew in violence once it became clear that the Russian army along with its Assyrians volunteers were returning. The first major massacre committed by Ottoman troop in Iran on defenceless civilians took place at the village of Haftevan at the end of February 1915. Assyrian males from the area between Dilman and Khosrowa were assembled allegedly for registration, but instead were slaughtered in very primitive fashion. In the town of Urmia Ottoman officials entered the French mission compound on February 12 and seized more than 150 persons. Sixty of these men were kept in jail. Some were hanged just outside the city gates and the rest were shot at Jewish Hill cemetery on February 23. The inhabitants of the outlying village of Gulpashan were massacred and plundered despite having paid "protection" money to authorities17. The actual number of deaths during this time has never been calculated, but they must have been enormous.

R. Stafford, an Englishman who was the former administrative inspector of Iraq's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, fairly observed : "It would be a great progress for Turks if they could show that regardless of what happened to the Armenians, another Christian community in Turkey (the Assyrians) is quite satisfied with its fortune"18. And what was their fortune ?

The strategy of the slaughters, the way they were organized and carried out served as an irrefutable evidence of the slaughterers' decision to totally exterminate a nation whose striving for unity, the desire to be loyal to its national identity and the Christian religion was impossible to destroy or shatter for a long time. Doomed to a total extermination, this outcast nation could rely only on its desperate bravery. The Assyrians really did not let that villainous crime be committed in obscurity. Even though unarmed, they fought to the very end without a slightest hope of victory.

[Joseph]

3.

As it can be seen, the Assyrians, being a national and religious minority, were in a dependent position in the society they lived. This means that in the existing Ottoman regime, this nation had to suffer oppression and different forms of deprivation of rights. The antichristian oppressions became more acute especially because of the existing religious hostility towards this nation.

Andr, Mandelstam, the first dragoman of the Russian Embassy at Constantinople wrote : "The Young Turk government was able to only partly carry out its plan to establish a radically turkified Ottoman Empire by way of profiting from the opportunities afforded by the Great War. Nevertheless, it succeeded in destroying approximately one million Armenians, and hundreds of thousands of Greeks, Lebanese, Assyro-Caldeans"19. In reality, as we know today 1,5 million Armenians20 and 750,000 Assyrians were subjected to genocide during World War I.

In November, 1916 the New York Times published Dr. W. Rockwell's (Professor in Union Theological Seminary and member of American Committee for Armenian and Syrian relief) article entitled "The Total of Armenian and Syrian Dead", where telling about the Armenian massacres in Turkey the author wrote : "How many Armenians and Syrian non-combatants have died of disease, hardship, or violence during the last two years ? ...The Armenians are not the only unfortunates ; the Syrians (Assyrians) also have been decimated. Great numbers of them have perished, but no one knows how many"21.

Another American periodical, newspaper the Atlantic Monthly wrote : "In six months the Young Turks succeeded in doing what the Old Turks were unable to accomplish in six centuries. The extermination of the Armenians is well under way. Thousands of Assyrians have vanished from the face of the earth"22.

Thus, during the World War I in the Ottoman Turkey and the adjacent Turkish territories a real genocide was implemented according to the criteria of international law. The Ottoman Turkey and the Great Powers are guilty of the bloody massacres of both Armenians and Assyrians. With the criminal connivance of the Great Powers and taking the opportunity presented by the martial law Turkey committed the gravest crime against mankind - genocide. The criminal policy of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and the Young Turks against the Armenians and Assyrians permits us to conclude that at the end of the 19th - early 20th century the Ottoman state developed into a genocidal state and became the cradle of genocide.

But the tragedy of Assyrians did not come to the end with this. Both during the World War I and after it the Assyrian nation bled both from the Europe's incitements and from the slaughters and oppressions organized by Turkish, Kurdish, Iranian and Arabic tyrants.

So, as we could see

The Assyrian Genocide was an alleged genocide against the Assyrian population of the former Ottoman Empire and Ottoman Turkey. Those supporting the genocide theses claim that the Assyrian population of the Eastern parts of Ottoman Turkey were forcibly relocated and massacred by Turkish and Kurdish forces during the years 1895-1896 under the regime of Sulat Abdul Hamid II and during WWI (1914-1918) under the regime of the Young Turks.

Reasons for the genocide vary. Since Armenians and Greeks also claim they were the subject of forced relocations and barbaric executions, some cite religious persecution against the Christian community of Anatolia as the cause. Others, including the Turkish government, claim that the Assyrians and Armenians sought autonomy from the Ottoman Turkey and joined the invading Russian army in the east. The Assyrian and Armenian communities, as Turkey claims, were seen as a threat and as a result were relocated to the Syrian Desert. Many deaths occurred on the "Death Marches" from starvation and dehydration, which Turkey claims was an accident.

The total death toll of Assyrians is unknown, but some estimates claim that 500,000-750,000 of them were killed.

The Assyrian question needs an international solution. This problem has so far been out of the limelight of the world community. For the reestablishment of justice, recognition of the national identities and cultural development it is essential that Turkey be condemned, as :

Since the proclamation of the Turkish Republic international laws have been ignored in this country.

A member of the UNO, Turkey implements decisions incompatible with the criteria it had accepted.

Turkey does not fulfill the obligations placed on it by international agreements. Not recognizing the principle of "equality of rights and freedom of self-determination of nations and peoples" Turkey violates the rights of local Assyrians. "Genocide" considered the greatest crime against the humanity by the UNO, is even now consistently implemented by Turkey towards the Assyrians. Exiling Assyrians, qualified as a crime by the UNO, Is still the case in Turkey. The UNO condemns national discrimination. Turkey continues the policy of assimilation adopted by its forerunners under the slogan "One nation, one language, on religion, one flag and one country". The UNO condemns terrorism, but Turkey still continues to carry out a policy of terror against Assyrians destroying their spiritual and material values. The Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly do not reach the territory of Turkey.

Notes:

1. In 1933 Dr. Lemkin was deeply disturbed by the massacre of Christian Assyrians in Iraq.http://www.europaworld.org/issue40/r...emkin22601.htm

2. Sargizov L., A Friendship Coming from the Ancient Times (The Assyrians in Armenia), Atra, N 4, St. Petersburg, 1992, p. 71. (Rus.)

3. Mkund T., Amita's Echoes, New York, 1950, p. 234. (Arm.)

4. The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, A collection of documents and materials under the editorship of Prof. M. G. Nersisyan, Yerevan, 1966, p. 120. (Arm.)

5. Khosroeva A., The Assyrian Genocide in the Ottoman Turkey and the Adjacent Turkish Territories (late 19th and the first quarter of the 20th centuries), Yerevan, 2004, p. 44. (Arm.)

6. Morgenthau H., Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, New York, 1918, p. 11. (Eng.)

7. Lepsius J., Bericht ?ber die Lage des Armenischer Volkes in T?rkei, Potsdam, 1916, p. 220. (Germ.)

8. Rifat Mevlan Zade, The Dark Pages of the Ottoman Revolution and Ittihat's Plans of Extirpating Armenians, Yerevan, 1990, pp. 98-99. (Arm.)

9. Marriott J.A.R., The Eastern Question, An Historical Study in European Diplomacy, 4th ed., Oxford, Clarendon, 1958, p. 536.(Eng.)

10. Dadrian V., Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish Sources, London-New York, 1991, p. 112. (Eng.)

11. Der Zor, Paris, 1955, p. 258. (Arm.)

12. Morgenthau H., op. cit., p. 309.

13. Alichoran J., Du g,nocide . la diaspora : les Assyro-chald,ens au XX siScle, Paris, 1994, p. 370. (French)

14. Ghosein El Fayez, The Slaughters in Armenia, Cairo, 1960, pp. 19-20.(Arm.)

15. Leslie A. Davis, The Slaughterhouse Province. An American diplomat's report on the Armenian Genocide 1915-1917, New-Rochelle, NY, 1989, p.144.(Eng.)

16. Morgenthau H., op. cit., p. 318.

17. Gaunt D., The Assyrian SEYFO in Hakkari and Urmia, Assyrian Star, vol. LVIII, Number 2, pp.14-15. (Eng.)

18. Stafford R. S., The Tragedy of the Assyrians, London, 1935, p. 27. (Eng.)

19. Mandelstam A., La Soci,t, des Nations et les Puissances devant le probl,me Arm,nien, Paris, 1926, p. 23. (French)

20. Kherlopian K., Genocidology, A Study of the Armenian Genocide, Beirut, 2006, p. 398.(Eng.)

21. Kloian R. D., The Armenian Genocide, News Accounts from the American Press (1915-1922), California, 1985, p. 188-189. (Eng.)

22. Ibid., p. 193.


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[Joseph]

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[Joseph]

Assyrian International News Agency
EU Conference Calls on Turkey to Recognize Assyrian Genocide
Posted GMT 4-3-2007 15:45:8
Brussels (AINA) -- Days before the restart of Turkish EU membership talks, the European Parliament hosted a conference where Parliament members, scholars and international experts agreed that Turkey must come to terms with the 1915 genocide before EU membership.

The heavily attended March 26th event was hosted by the European parliamentary groups, European United Left, Nordic Green Left, and the Seyfo Center, an Assyrian institution working on increasing awareness of the 1915 genocide of the Assyrians, as well as Armenians, and Greeks by Turkey. The panel speakers included:

Eva-Britt Svensson, GUE/NGL Politician and Member of the European Parliament
Sabri Atman, Director of the Seyfo Center
Prof. David Gaunt, Södertörns University College, Sweden
Markus Ferber, EVP-ED, Member of the European Parliament, member of leading German party
Willy Fautré, Director Human Rights Without Frontiers
The first speaker, Ms. Svensson, called for Turkey's membership in the EU but not without first complying with the Copenhagen criteria regarding the 1915 genocide as well as the "unrestricted opening of Ottoman archives for the world to see". She further stated that "In a democratic environment, such issues should be discussed openly and not suppressed. Turkey should not be an exception."

Sabri Atman, founder of the Seyfo Center, further agreed that the current Turkish position regarding the genocide and the silence by the EU countries is unacceptable.

"33% of the [Turkish] population was Christian. Today in Turkey, the total number of Christian people only amounts to 0.1% of the population. What happened to these people? What happened to the Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks? Where are they? Where did they disappear to?"

He also addressed some of the counter arguments offered by some Turkish politicians that "Armenian organizations were fighting against the Turkish authority for independence and for that reason hundreds of thousands of Armenians lost their lives. This is just complete fabrication. How about the Assyrians, which Assyrian organization was fighting for independence? "

Prof. Gaunt, of Södertörns University, Sweden and recent author of a book on the genocide of 1915 provided an answer to Mr. Atman's questions by stating that "Evidence shows that Assyrians did not have any armed offensive measures". Gaunt provided a historical overview of the genocide and how it expanded past the ottoman areas and well into Persia.

The director of internationally renowned organization, Human Rights without Frontiers, Dr. Willy Fautré, focused on two issues: the specific Assyrian experience during the genocide and the current activities of Turkish groups in Brussels, the capital of Belgium and the European Union. On the Assyrian Experience, Fautré stressed that "Based on the formal definition of Genocide, the widespread persecution of the Assyrian civilians indeed constituted a form of Genocide. Up to now the international community has been hesitant in recognizing the Assyrian experience as a form of genocide. However, the Assyrian Genocide is indistinguishable, in form, from its Armenian counterpart."

Fautre also provided numerous accounts of blatant interference and activities by Turkish groups in Belgium to suppress any talks and actions that shed light on the Genocide perpetrated by Turkey. He called on the Belgian government to take action by:

Recognizing the genocide unambiguously as well as have their government members do so.
Screen their candidates regarding the genocide and to swear the allegiance to the Belgian state
Markus Ferber, a 13 year member of the EU parliament and the leading German party went further than the other speakers in being against full membership but instead offering the status of "privileged partner" for Turkey. The evidence he has seen shows that over 3 million people were victims of the Genocide by Turkey and that his party will only support membership if Turkey faces its past and addresses it.

The conference hall was filled over capacity by mostly Assyrian family members of the genocide victims and survivors who traveled from such countries as Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, US, and the UK. The panel Chairperson, Ms. Nicme Seven, explained that the conference was held at this specific week when Turkey's chief European Union negotiator Ali Babacan is to travel to Brussels to attend the intergovernmental conference for the kick-start of membership talks with Turkey.

The EU restarted membership talks with Turkey, which have been at a standstill for almost a year. The conference was concluded by the signing of a joint press statement by the panel speakers.

Press Release
Assyrian Genocide (Seyfo)
Genocide, Denial, and the Right of Recognition
Monday, March, 26th of 2007
European Parliament
Rue Wiertz in Brussels
Conference room P7C050

During the years surrounding World War I more than half of the Assyrian population in the Ottoman Empire was systematically murdered. The majority of those that remained were either slaughtered, deported and forced to leave their homeland. That genocide of over half a million Assyrians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 is a fact, but has largely been forgotten by the world. The pain of Seyfo -- the Assyrian Genocide - is still a dark shadow over the Assyrian people. This pain and suffering continues in the collective memory of the Assyrians as Turkey continues to deny and publicly denounce responsibility for this largely forgotten crime during the First World War. Obviously, the Turkish Republic as the lawful successor of the Ottoman Empire keeps on advocating a denial policy and refuses the genocide that was committed against the Christians despite the overwhelming facts.

Nowadays, Turkey is a country pursuing to access the European Union, which is a political construction as such based on democratic principles and cultural diversity. Due to that, Turkey has to commence with tackling the fundamental issues such as the genocide in order to move towards building a democratic basis according the European standards. The Turkish state has to comprehend that minorities and thus the existing ethnic and cultural diversity within its country is one of the key elements to progress the process of its access to the European Union.

Therefore the European Union should act in accordance with its own values and bylaws, and oblige Turkey to come to terms with this dark page of her history. The discussion on the genocide should not be a stumbling block for Turkey, but a constructive symbol for a legitimate equality for those minorities still remaining in the country and their statutory acceptance. Although the recognition of the genocide is not an official admission criteria for the accession negotiations, the European Union should apply political pressure on Turkey to ensure a potential candidacy in order to boost the democratization process and have equal rights for all its members and future citizens.

Eventually, Turkey has its fate in its own hands. Either the given chance will be taken or the pace of negotiations will stonewalled and maybe even brought to a stop.

Eva-Britt Svensson, GUE/NGL , Swedish Politician and Member of the European Parliament
Sabri Atman, Director of the Seyfo Center
Mechtild Rothe, Vice President of the European Parliament
Prof. David Gaunt, Södertörns University College, Sweden
Markus Ferber, EVP-ED, Member of the European Parliament
Willy Fautré, Human Rights Without Frontiers

[Joseph]

Assyrian International News Agency
Assyrian Genocide Scholar Addresses British House of Commons
Posted GMT 4-23-2008 21:3:44
London (AINA) -- Assyrian genocide scholar Sabri Atman addressed the British House of Commons on the Turkish genocide of Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks in World War One. The genocide claimed 750,000 Assyrians (75%), 1.5 million Assyrians and 400,000 Greeks.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am an Assyrian! I am an Assyrian who lives in Sweden and have relatives and friends living in many other countries, as refugees, desperately missing their hometowns and villages.
I am an Assyrian who seeks strength from a piece of stone smuggled out from his lost hometown and kept as the most precious item in his home.

I am an Assyrian who has come here to tell you about the Assyrians who, along with Armenians, were subjected to a genocide in 1915 within the Ottoman Empire by the Ottoman state.

Assyrians once lived in their hundreds of thousands in the cities, towns and villages which are geographically located in the east and south-east regions of today's Turkey.

Then came the 1914- 1915 genocide which targeted Armenians and Assyrians.

Over half of all Assyrians were exterminated in the genocide. Most of them were killed by swords. Yes, swords! Or SEYFO, as Assyrians say. I would like you to keep the word SEYFO in your mind. It is a word which has meant for Assyrians since 1915 more than just what it literally means. For us it means blood, it means death, it means pain felt deep in the heart, it means a homeland which is no longer home.

The elderly Assyrians who witnessed the Assyrian genocide still remember a saying they heard from some of those who got involved in carrying out the genocide: 'Red or white, an onion is an onion; it has got to be chopped up.'. Meaning; a Christian is a Christian, whether Armenian or Assyrian: he has got to be killed.

It is clear from Ottoman documents that 1915 deportations and massacres were not only directed against Armenians. The general plan was to homogenise Turkey by getting rid of the non-Muslim peoples, which in the end resulted in 2 million Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks being deported from their homelands or massacred.

"Seyfo", the Assyrian genocide, is still fresh in the minds of Assyrian people as we are still being adversely effected by its consequences. As a result of SEYFO, we have lost our homes, and are scattered all over the world as a result of which we are now in danger of loosing our national identity.

We, Assyrians, have gone through a very traumatic experience. SEYFO opened in the souls of Assyrians deep and painful wounds which are waiting to be treated. We lost more than half of our population. It is now the time for humanity to hear and do something about it. International recognition would not take away the pain deeply rooted in our souls but would help us feel that we are a part of the humanity which could not go to the rescue of our grandparents.

We are still hurting but what we are after is not hate or revenge. What we want is recognition and reconciliation

The Assyrian genocide has yet to be recognised by Turkey and the International community. We have been waiting for 93 years now. In 93 years the world has turned from a group of individual countries, where atrocities of any size or nature were often seen as matters concerning the countries they took place, into a global community. We are fast becoming a worldwide nation of humanity. The 6 billion strong nation is not only soon going to take over the future but the past as well. The past genocides is a matter for all peoples now. The 1915 genocide is no longer a matter for the perpetrators and the victims. It is far too big a matter for only them to deal with.

I am most happy that so far about twenty countries have officially recognised the 1915 Armenian Genocide. I hope Britain and other countries will follow suit. As a representative of Assyrians I am asking for justice for my people too. Remember: Assyrians were subjected to the 1915 genocides too. We also demand that today Britain and tomorrow the whole world officially recognise this fact.

There were Assyrians living in Van, Bitlis, Urfa, Hakkari, Diyarbekir, Salamas, Urmiya provinces. Today, in all those provinces you would hardly see an Assyrian person. Could Turkish authorities tell us the truth as to where have they all gone? So far they have failed provide a credible account.

But we all know that some of them were deported; children left behind were forcefully converted to Islam; and some others were simply killed. And yet Turkey is still denying that in 1915 this genocide was carried out by the government and the state agencies of the time.

Turkey does not want '1915 incidents' to be a political issue but a subject for discussion for historians. The 1915 genocide has become an issue for Turkey only after various countries started to recognise it. It is now time for Britain as well to recognise the 1915 Assyrian, Armenian and Greek genocide. Britain was one of the witnesses to the Armenian-Assyrian genocide. She cannot and must not close her eyes to the facts just because she thinks recognising it would adversely effect her economic and political relationship with Turkey. The sooner Turkey recognises the 1915 genocide the better. Better for Turkey, better for the Armenians and Assyrians.

Today I call upon Turkey to free itself from its taboos and recognise that in 1915, during the Ottoman Empire, hundreds of thousands of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks were killed in a genocide planned, organised and carried out by the government of the time.

Some weeks ago Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the Israel's Knesset, and said in Hebrew, "The Holocaust fills us with shame. I bow my head before the survivors and I bow my head before you in tribute to the fact that you were able to survive."

I wonder when will a Turkish Prime Minister apologize to the victims of 1915 Genocide?,

I wonder when will a Turkish Prime Minister learn the genocide victims' languages and apologize to them in their languages?

I wonder when will a Turkish Prime Minister realize that the best way to build a future together, is recognition.

Thank you

Sabri Atman
House of Commons

[Joseph]

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