The Assyrian Democratic Organization
Finishing up Sunday night services, nearly 100 parishioners were preparing to leave when they were confronted.
The priest stood in front to defend them, but was immediately cut down.
For four hours, in sheer panic, the congregation stood at the mercy of the terrorists as they made calls from their cell phones making the uninformed demand that two Egyptian Christians, whom they had mistakenly thought had converted to Islam and were being held captive, be released before they would release the worshipers they held hostage in the house of God.
The courage of the believers in the Church in Baghdad recalled to many the words of a young Assyrian boy in Northern Iraq who stood up when confronted with a similar situation and proudly said, "I am a Christian," before he was shot.
Finally, after a much delayed response, Iraqi and US troops stormed the church in an ill-prepared action which resulted in 58 deaths and 75 injuries, reminding Assyrian Christians worldwide of the Assyrian Holocaust in the early part of the 20th century when nearly one third of their people were systematically massacred.
To add insult to injury, it took the French to come forward to offer to evacuate the wounded as no other help was forthcoming.
This attack was followed by a series of street and house-bombing attacks throughout Baghdad, targeting Christian communities in an attempt to drive them out of Iraq and the Middle East. Similar attempts are being made against the Coptic Christians in Egypt, demonstrating a medieval and outdated mentality.
The Assyrian Christians are the indigenous people of Iraq. Most people do not realize that in fact the Middle East was Christian and Jewish, with Arabs simply being Bedouins in the desert.
With the rise of Islam in the 7th century, little by little the Arabs moved into historically Christian and Jewish communities in the same pattern as they are doing in Iraq until they were driven out. A community which, according to the Iraqi government, numbered 2.5 million before the war has now been nearly halved with nearly 500,000 as refugees scattered throughout the region and within the country.
As the first Christian nation, the largest missionary group in history, and the only people who continue to speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus, it is critical for the community to remain on its ancestral lands.
"We cannot take this any longer," says Carlo Ganjeh, Secretary of the Americas for one of the oldest Assyrian organizations, the Assyrian Universal Alliance, which was formed in 1968 in France as a leadership council for Assyrian Christian organizations worldwide.
"As the indigenous people of Iraq, we demand an Assyrian area on our ancestral lands in North Iraq," Ganjeh continues, "This is provided for in the Iraqi Constitution and we see it as the only way for our people to remain in Iraq."
Ganjeh refers to a proposal, originallysuggested by the Iraqi Foreign Minister and Iraqi Prime Minister, for an administrative area much like the United Kingdom where England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own parliaments, language and customs while being together as the UK.
As the various parties jockey for positions in the Iraqi government, they all agree on one thing – they want the Assyrian Christians to remain in their homeland, and support an area for them.
"Support from the international communityfor the Assyrian Autonomous Region on our ancestral lands in North Iraq is the only way to save this remnant of the great Assyrian nation in the Middle East," concludes Ganjeh.
"We have paid a tremendous price in human life throughout history to maintain ourselves on our ancestral lands, and will not abandon them willingly. We call upon the international community to help us preserve our ancient nation on its birth place in North Iraq and to save one of the last historic Christian communities in the Middle East from anihilation.."
The Assyrian Universal Alliance can be contacted at www.aua.net.
