The Assyrian Democratic Organization
Since 2002, nearly a year before the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the Christian Assyrians in Iraq (also known as Chaldeans, and Syriacs) have been under threat, due largely to their non-Muslim status. Beheadings, kidnappings, and assassinations have escalated in proportion to how vocal the large Diaspora community became in support of its long persecuted people. On 1 August 2004 the attacks on Christians culminated in the bombing of six churches in Mosul and Baghdad during worship services, and several people including children were killed in the Assyrian town of Baghdeda on the Nineveh Plains, on 10 September 2004 when a residential area became the target of insurgents? mortar attacks.
At this time, the Iraqi government’s security apparatus is unable to prevent intimidation and killings perpetrated against the Assyrians in Iraq. Furthermore, the Iraqi Government makes no attempt to acknowledge, investigate, or punish officials in the North and in and around Baghdad and Mosul where a greater concentration of the Assyrians live.
Widespread and systematic abuse of human rights and targeted killings of Christians continue every day in Iraq, mainly in the Kurdish-controlled areas in the North, Mosul and Baghdad. As a result of such atrocities, some 40,000 Assyrians have already fled Iraq since July of this year. Iraq, once the center of the earliest Christian Churches in the world, may soon be cleared of its Assyrian population, the only indigenous people of that country — ancient Mesopotamia.
AANF is asking Congress to ask the Iraqi government to designate a geographic “safe haven” for the Assyrians in Iraq, protected by the Coalition Forces until security returns to Iraq. A minor legislative amendment could also address the plight of the Assyrians in Iraq and help appropriate 5 percent of the Iraqi portion of the Foreign Appropriations Bill for the safety of the Christian population and the rebuilding of their villages. To remain in their homeland, AANF states, the Assyrians in Iraq need:
– A safe haven, the administrative region guaranteed in Iraq?s Transitional Administrative Law: Article 53D, which would include
the villages located near Mosul, in the Nineveh Plains.
– Congressionally authorized funds to rebuild their destroyed villages, roads, schools, and clinics and economic development.
– To have funds allocated for refugee resettlement to bring back the educated and professional young people of the community
– To know that the greatest democracy in the world, the United States, stands with them and help them in registering as Assyrians,
and not Arabs or Kurds.
Information on the campaign can be found at http://www.aina.org/petition.html.
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