Assyrian Democratic Organization ADO
(AINA) — A fourteen year old boy was found last week crucified and murdered in the city of Albasra in Iraq. The crucifixion is believed to be a late reply to the Popes remarks on Islam. In the same week, and for the same reason, a priest was kidnapped and had his throat cut off.Scaremongering in the form of dvd-movies from executions of Christians are distributed daily among the population in Mosul and Baghdad. I have one at home if you like to study how beheadings are carried out, minute by minute.
The well respected British paper The Guardian reports that as many as half of Iraq’s Christians might be on the run. The Christians flee to neighbouring countries like Jordan, Syria and Turkey. The biggest single group of refugees in Jordan year 2006 are Christians from Iraq, according to a yet unpublished report from the UNHCR. 44 percent of the Iraqi refugees who have sought asylum in Syria are Christians, according to the mentioned report.
This is probably what history books and debate articles will tell around the year 2030:
“The genocide was carried out in the shadow of a war in Iraq. This human slaughter was the culmination of a series of attacks and massacres on the Christians and it nearly wiped out the Christian indigenous population in the area. The Sunni Iraq, Shia Iraq and Kurdish Iraq were built on the ruins of this genocide”.Not one day passes without reports of bomb assaults, executions (many of them beheadings), rape, and death threats against Christians.Asia Times reports about the increasing number of young Christian women who commit suicide after being raped and desecrated by men from Islamic groups.
I am myself Assyrian (also known as Chaldean and Syriac), and I have many stories to tell about my own family who was slaughtered during the First World War. My grandmother and her three cousins, all between two and five years old, were the only survivors of the Gunduru family who counted more than three hundred persons. It took two days to slaughter them. My grandmother and the other children were either “buried” among the corpses in a well or hidden in the church under the floor.
Assyrians are now trying to get the world’s and the Media’s attention for the new ethnic cleansing, the one going on right now. It is good that genocides of the past are debated and given attention, like the genocide in Turkey during First World War. But genocide is taking place right now — and we should not wait one hundred years before we talk about it.
During the last week the ethnic cleansing has made headlines in several of well known papers of the world. The New York Times, International Herald Tribune and National Review are some of those who have realized the gravity of the situation. We must all do what we can in order to stop the cleansing of Christian Assyrians (Syrians and Chaldeans) in Iraq. United Nations, United States of America and Great Britain must also act, and they must do so right away.
By Nuri Kino
Nuri Kino is a journalist in Sweden specializing in investigative journalism, and is one of the most highly awarded journalists in Europe. He is an Assyrian from Turkey. His documentary, Assyriska: a National team without a Nation, was awarded The Golden Palm at the 2006 Beverly Hills Film festival.
