Assyrian Genocide

[sdf1234585]

http://www.rallycongress.com/ninevehproject/1059/

Please help in sending letters to Congress to allow Assyrians self-rule in the Nineveh Plains. It is just an email and really easy to do. Thank you!

**also, does anyone in Arizona heard about the Assyrian/Armenian picnic in AZ? I've heard about about it but haven't received a lot of info about it. Thanks.

[Joseph]

http://www.rallycongress.com/ninevehproject/1059/

Please help in sending letters to Congress to allow Assyrians self-rule in the Nineveh Plains. It is just an email and really easy to do. Thank you!

**also, does anyone in Arizona heard about the Assyrian/Armenian picnic in AZ? I've heard about about it but haven't received a lot of info about it. Thanks.

Will do. I support the Assyrians 110%; we all should.

The picnic is a great idea and more activities like this should happen.

[sdf1234585]

Thanks!

[Joseph]

http://www.assyriatimes.com/engine/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3326

Assyrians, the Indigenous People of the Middle East, Leave Home
7/7/2008 23:22:00
By Salim Abraham
GroundReport.com


On a sizzling summer afternoon in 1974, my mother was trailing behind me, running hastily home to escape one of the stone battles that raged between neighbourhoods in Syria’s northeastern city of Qamishli.

Once we crossed the sand bridge that separated the Assyrian quarter from the rest of the city, we were out of the slingshots’ range.
This one was the last battle youngsters from the Assyrian quarter fought against Khanika, a neighboring Kurdish quarter, as the government soon tightened its policing of neighborhoods.

The weapons in the battle were giant slingshots (called stone canons) and ghee can lids; the ammunition was stones. It was like a real war with trenches dug along the frontlines of the fighting neighbourhoods.
At the time, I was seven years old. I didn't understand what was going on; why such wars broke out. The only thing my mother told me was: "It's a fight between us and the Kurds."

I don’t remember the logic behind those fights and how they were planned or started. But I do recall that the Assyrian quarter was vibrant and buzzing with life and robust youngsters ready to defend it and shut it off to intruders.

"It was the most active period of my life," recalls Ashour Ileya, 47, an Assyrian plumber who lives in the Assyrian quarter. "It was like we were doing something big, like defending our community."

Then, more than 400 Assyrian Christian families lived in the neighbourhood’s mud houses, which sprawl into the eastern part of the city. Now, only 30 Assyrian families live there and only two churches are still standing.

Almost all Ileya’s friends and most of his relatives have left for the U.S and Europe. He is waiting for his American visa to be issued as well.
The overall population of Qamishli was around 90,000 in the mid 1970s, according to official statistics. Assyrians were estimated to represent more than half the city’s population. Today, Christian Assyrians represent slightly more than 20% of the city’s 300,000 people.

Christians represented 13-15% of Syria’s seven million people in the mid 1970s. Today they represent less than 10%, or about 1.7 million people, according to a U.S State Department report.

The country’s Assyrians are concentrated in the al-Jazeera region, about 400 miles northeast of Damascus. The region, the largest among Syria’s 14 provinces, includes Hasaka, al-Malikeya and Qamishli. They also exist in Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and Iran in varying numbers.
The Assyrians once dominated the Middle East. In the seventh century B.C, their empire stretched from today’s Iraq through southern Turkey to the Mediterranean. They were among the first converts to Christianity and are divided into several churches, including the Catholic Chaldean, the Syriac Orthodox and Catholic and the Church of the East.

The Christian exodus from the Middle East came to light after the news of Iraqi Assyrians escaping the violence in their war-torn country following Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003 made it onto the international news agenda. Almost half their population fled Iraq, leaving behind only around 700,000.

But the Arab leaders remained silent to their plight. The most recent Arab summit in Damascus, in March 2008, took no notice of their dilemma. The final communiqué did not make any mention of the plight of either the Assyrians or the Arab Christians despite growing evidence that their very existence in the Middle East is targeted.

In Lebanon, once a majority Christian country, Christians represent only 34% of its population of four million people, according to the World Christian Database. The database, which bases its work on church estimates, says Arab Christians’ percentage in the Palestinian territories has also dropped from 5.3% in 1970 to 2.5% of 3.7 million Palestinians today.

In Jordan, a country of 5.4 million people, the Christian population dropped from 5% in 1970s to about 3% now, according to a U.S State Department report. But, in Egypt, the number of Copts - Egyptian Christians - range from 5.6 million, according to Egyptian government estimates, to 11 million people, according to Coptic Church estimates. Nonetheless, they complain of discrimination in the most populated Arab country of 80 million people. One example of this is that the government still restricts the building of churches in Egypt.

The Christian flight from Syria occurred in part for economic reasons. In the mid-1980s, the U.S and the European nations imposed crippling 12-year-long economic sanctions on the country after a British court accused Syrian officials of being involved in an attempt to plant a bomb aboard an Israeli El Al plane. Syrians stood in long lines in front of government-run retail stores to get bread, vegetables, fruits and even napkins and grease. At the time, the Assyrian quarter was changing face. The stream of water that used to flow from Jagjag, the river which splits Qamishli into two parts, ran permanently dry. And the neighbourhood’s Assyrian population was dwindling, too. It was losing a few families to the West each year, where they hoped to find a more prosperous life. Many of them were selling their homes to pay smugglers to get them out of the country. Yet, the neighbourhood still kept its livelihood, with about 250 families living there and a football team named after Faris al-Khouri, the only Christian prime minister in Syria’s history who held the post for one year until October 1945.

But gloomier days for the Assyrians of Syria were yet to unravel. In October 1986, 22 members of the Assyrian Democratic Organisation - founded in 1957 in Qamishli to promote Assyrian rights in Syria - were arrested for opposing the government’s official policy of Arabization. They were released after six months in detention.

The clampdown prompted many more Assyrians to leave the country. A former ADO official, wishing to remain anonymous and now living in Canada, who was detained during the crackdown on his party’s leadership, said: "The impact was immense on us. We were tortured physically and psychologically. I was a pioneer against our people’s immigration from the country. The detention experience has turned me into immigration promoter."

An agricultural engineer, he owned a vast farm with hundreds of trees, apple, apricot and vine, in a village thriving on the banks of Khabour River, several miles northwest of Hasaka city. He blagged his way out of the country only months after he was released in 1987.

Had he stayed, he would have been turned into an informant for the security apparatus, the Mukhabarat, he said.

In Syria, freedom of worship is maintained and Syriac, the language of Assyrians believed to have been spoken by Jesus Christ, is allowed to be taught in church schools. Yet, the government does not recognize their ethnic identity as Assyrians. It refers to them only as Christian Arabs.

The Assyrians exodus from the entire Middle East also has psychological reasons deeply rooted in history. Their communities in the Middle East have been oppressed by rulers in both the distant and recent past.

In 1914, the Ottomans slaughtered about 1.5 million Armenians, 750,000 Assyrians and 350,000 Pontiac Greeks and drove hundreds of thousands of Christians out of their homelands. The religious and ethnic tensions in the predominantly Muslim region continued for decades.

In 1933, the massacre of 3,000 Assyrians at the hands of the then-Iraqi government in Simile, a small Assyrian town near Mosul, prompted the displacement of about 34,000. Colonel Bakker Sedqi, a Kurd, led the campaign.

Survivors of those massacres helped build Qamishli and Hasaka in 1925 and about 36 villages, purely ethnic Assyrian, along the Khabour River, in 1936.

As I grew older, I learned that those stone battles witnessed as a seven-year-old, between the Assyrian quarter and Khanika, were a reflection of old grudges. Assyrians have suffered throughout history at the hands of Kurds, as well as Turks, Iranians and, sometimes, Arabs.
But the construction of Qamishli marked the end of their suffering. It became a safe heaven for them and a place to maintain their culture and way of life.

However, government policies of Arabization and discrimination against ethnic minorities, including Kurds, as well as economic crises are pushing these minorities - especially Assyrians - to abandon their homes they built brick by brick.

Looking at the four-story building rising above his home with new inhabitants, Ileya, the plumber, wondered why his community has dwindled so quickly.

"Nothing is left for us," Ileya has said over a glass of beer in his home in the Assyrian quarter, "not even those stones we fought with."

[Joseph]

Turks, Kurds Threaten Assyrian Monastery in Turkey

GMT 12-2-2008 11:58:55
Assyrian International News Agency
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Tur Abdin, Turkey (AINA) -- Kurdish leaders from the villages of Yayvantepe, Eglence and Candarli, in cooperation with influential members of the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), are continuing their so-called "lawful means" campaign to confiscate the land of the Assyrian monastery of St. Gabriel, founded in 397 A.D. (AINA 9-16-2008). During the Ottoman Empire the monastery received the status of a Foundation for the Syrian Orthodox Church and is still legally regarded as such. Over the last three decades it has developed into a major religious and community center that attracts tens of thousands visitors from Turkey and abroad. The entire region has benefited from this development, though for some fanatic Kurdish village heads, it seems to be a problem.

As their initial efforts did not materialize and court hearings and trials have been postponed, the Kurdish leaders of the villages increased pressure by harassing the monastery with the following false accusations:


The monastery has been established illegally while a wall has been built around it
The Church is doing missionary work among youth
The teaching in the monastery violates Turkish laws
National Unity is destroyed
The church is a historic museum and should be not misused for praying
The monastery does not pay taxes

Meanwhile, Bishop Samuel Aktas of St. Gabriel has issued a detailed report titled The Imminent Problems Facing the Syriac monastery of Mor Gabriel in Midyat, Turkey, while summarizing what he calls "alarming concerns" the monastery is facing. The report is also replying in detail to the false criminal accusation filed as lawsuits; in fact, the latter are a means to harass the monastery and its inhabitants.

In order to investigate these and additional similar accusations, several court hearings are scheduled for December 2008:


On Wednesday December 3, 2008 Bishop Timotheos Samuel Aktas will report the court and argue to the absurd allegations submitted as lawsuit by of the neighboring villages. For instance, he is blamed to have destroyed parts of the monastery, namely the Church of the Holy Theodora and a mosque within the monastery. Everybody who is familiar with monastery knows that several years ago the Church of Theodora has been restored and is one of the most attractive parts of the monastery
On Friday, December 19, 2008: The court will continue hearings that began on November 19th about the administrative borders of the monastery with its neighboring villages
On Wednesday, December 24, 2008 (Christmas Eve): The court will continue hearings that started on November 14th, regarding Land which is labeled as "forest" and that was confiscated by the State in pre-text of cadastral measurements. As a side note, it should be noted that Turkish Courts and Institutions knowingly disrespect Christmas Eve and schedule hearings on that day
On Wednesday, December 31, 2008: The court will deal with the wall that was built by the monastery administration to secure its land, while the neighboring villages falsely claim that the wall stands on "their ground" and hence needs to be demolished

Assyrians (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs) living in Europe and elsewhere along with their Church organizations are closing ranks and are showing strong solidarity with St. Gabriel, while initiating appeals to EU institutions and European Churches for help and support. Janet Abraham, former Vice Chair-lady of an International Human Rights Organization and Board member of the Tur Abdin Solidarity Group says "Assyrians across all denominations are concerned about the new quality of harassment on the remaining Assyrians in Tur Abdin and especially on St. Gabriel. While it seems that the false accusations against the monastery are purposely not blocked in the first place by the Turkish Institutions and dealt with in a bureaucratic and jurisdictional process to maintain pressure, the perpetrators are indirectly encouraged to escalate their claims further and further."

A joint press release issued by the Assyrian Democratic Organization, Assyrian Chaldean Syriac Alliance and Syrian Orthodox Church of Göteborg, on November 26, stated "the head of the village Yayvantepe threatened to burn the monastery and raze it to the ground in front of the military personnel and the state prosecutor," with impunity. St. Gabriel monastery is regarded as the oldest religious center of the community for centuries; a threat to the monastery endangers the very existence of the remaining Christian minority.

According to Abraham, the troubles of the St. Gabriel monastery have been already addressed in a German parliament speech on Foreign policy by Mrs. Erika Steinbach of the Christian Democratic Party, on September 17, 2008. Bernd Posselt, MEP, has submitted the matter to the European Parliament on October 9, 2008. In addition, various EU politicians expressed strong concern about the developments and promised or triggered support, among them Markus Ferber and Jens Holm. Germany's largest Newspapers have written articles highlighting the plight of St. Gabriel.

In Germany, the highest Council of the Catholic bishops as well as the head of the Evangelical Churches promised support for the case as reaction to various appeals including from the Syrian Orthodox Church representatives. In reply to various requests by concerned Assyrians, the German Foreign Ministry replied on November 28 that, "The German Embassy in Ankara like other European Union (EU) member states as well as the EU Commission Representative in Ankara are closely observing the development concerning St. Gabriel and are in regular contacts with Turkish Government offices as well as with lawyers of the monastery". Furthermore, "the situation of the non-Muslim minorities and the topic of religious freedom are essential parts of the political dialog, which the German Government conducts with Turkey, be it on bi-lateral level or be it on EU level." The German Foreign Ministry assures that they will follow the issues regarding St. Gabriel closely.

Assyrians over the world are following the case with fierce attention and hope that the Turkish judiciary system, after its apparent adaptation to EU norms, will speak justice and the Turkish authorities will stop the village heads, neighbors to St. Gabriel, from bringing defamatory allegations against such an ancient center of Christianity in Turkey.