The Assyrian Democratic Organization
Netherlands- Sweden – ESNA —
Prof. Dr Bas ter Haar Romeny (Leiden University) started the conference on 14 December with the sad news about our esteemed colleague Dr Fuat Deniz:
Unfortunately, at the beginning of this meeting I have to bring you very sad news. Last Tuesday one of our speakers, Dr Fuat Deniz, was attacked on the campus of his University in Örebro, Sweden. He was stabbed in the back of the neck. At the hospital, they have performed surgery on him for six hours, and although his situation seemed to stabilize at first, later it deteriorated. He died on Thursday as a result of his injuries. Swedish police have collected a description of the suspect, who remains at large, from witnesses and have a picture of him from a surveillance camera. The motif remains unclear.
Fuat Deniz was married and had one daughter, three years old. He himself was born in the village of Kerburan, in Tur-Abdin, as the family’s eldest son. When he was nine years old, his family emigrated to Sweden. As a bright young man, he studied in University and sociology became his main subject. In recent years he moved to other subjects as well, but his first books discuss the situation of the Assyrians/Syriacs. I am referring to his A life between two worlds and his 2001 dissertation The odyssey of a minority.
Maintenance and transformation of ethnic identity in response to processes of modernization – the Assyrian case, written in Swedish with an English summary. This dissertation considers the history of the Assyrians/Syriacs in the twentieth century in the context of the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of the Turkish national state which brought with it discrimination, forced movement, and mass murder of the Christian minorities. In addition to the historical investigation, the dissertation investigates Assyrians/Syriacs who have migrated to Sweden, and adapted to a new context, maintaining as well as transforming their identity in doing so. He discusses, for instance, how the elderly coped with the fact that they expected to arrive in a Christian country, only to discover on Swedish soil that Sweden was a secularized nation. Fuat was the first to publish an in-depth study of the migration of his people and their experience as a minority in Sweden. As his methodology is very strong, I am sure that this book will remain a standard work for a long time. He set an example to all of us of how this kind of research should be done.
In 2005, we invited Fuat to lecture for us, and since then we have maintained contact, and we established cooperation between our project and his research. He became one of the main members of the committee of examiners of the PhD thesis of Naures Atto, which deals with the identity discourses of Assyrians/Syriacs in Sweden and Germany. She has now almost finished and was looking forward to discuss a number of chapters with him this weekend. Dr Fuat Deniz during one of his scholarly visits to Leiden University in the Netherlands, 2005
In Sweden, at the University and in the community, people are shocked and saddened by the news. Fuat was to receive Örebro University’s ‘good educator’ award next week. He was admired among colleagues and students, who chose him as their favourite for the award. But he was also respected outside Sweden. The members of my research project here in the Netherlands and all of us present at this Symposium join in their feelings of admiration, and in the sense of disbelief, shock, and sadness that is caused by his death. We find it hard to understand that such a wonderful and promising colleague and friend would meet his end in such a way. Our thoughts and prayers go to his family, relatives, and friends. We have decided to dedicate our symposium to his memory.
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His Excellency Mor Polycarpus, Metropolitan of the Netherlands, has kindly agreed to say prayers in memory of Dr Fuat Deniz. Your Excellency, may I ask you to take the floor?
Dear Friends,
I would like to thank Professor Bas ter Haar Romeny, the director of Pionier Project at Leiden University and the convener of this Concluding Symposium of the Leiden Pionier Project: The Formation of a Communal Identity Among West Syrian Christians, for inviting me to say few words and to offer a prayer in memory of our beloved Dr. Fuat Deniz of Örebro University, Sweden where he taught sociology.
I am glad to be able to say few words and chant a prayer in memory Dr Deniz, a remarkable scholar and intellectual who was pioneer among the Diaspora Suryoye in writing and telling the story of his people in Mesopotamia, and chronicling their dramatic journey from their homeland and their settlement in Western Europe. Dr Deniz himself had fled with his parents from his homeland in Tur ‘Abdin and took refuge in Sweden in hope of finding a brighter future as well as security there.
Indeed, he found a better place in his new home, Sweden, where he flourished and soon became a role model for his fellow young Suryoye in the Diaspora. It seems that people who had feared the acumen and brilliance of his words wanted to end his life and thereby silence him. However, they did not realize that Dr Fuat is able to speak and guide even after his death. The story which he wrote and shared with the academic community and his people will continue to speak volumes through future generations, and will even become a poem as well as a psalm for them.
The prayerful poem I chose to chant in memory of Dr. Fuat Deniz is taken from Mor Sohduno, also known as Martyrius who lived in the seventh century. The poem is relevant to the life and mission of Dr. Fuat Deniz and clearly tells us that our academic hero is not dead. The knife and silence of the coward killer(s) can not put him to sleep. The story spoken through Dr. Fuat Deniz will be spoken by future generations of the academic community and will become a poem of praise in the mouth of energetic and peaceful young Suryoye throughout the world. Here comes the poem in Syriac/Aramaic: 
It translates:
Even after my death, I will not refrain from your praise
For the one who lives in you never dies.
Your word is awake, and the silence of Sheol cannot put it to sleep.
Let it be spoken through me so that the future generations may speak it.
Mor Sohduno/Martyrius
May the memory of our Malphono Fuat Deniz be eternal. At this time our thoughts and prayers are with his family and his friends. I would like to conclude by saying the Lord’s Prayer in memory of our Malphono.
Mor Polycarpus Augin Aydin
Archbishop of The Netherlands
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Dr. Alison Salvesen (Oxford University, UK), concluded the conference on 16 December with the following words:
We arrived in Leiden to learn of the shocking murder of one of the participants, Dr Fuat Deniz, of Örebro University in Sweden. He was attacked on Tuesday and died in hospital just the day before the conference was due to start, as yet we don’t know the motive for the murder, but his work on the communal identity of the Assyrians in Sweden may be connected in some way to the tragedy of his death. Though we as academics may imagine that we can examine such a theme in an abstract and dispassionate way, without risks, it apparently raises strong feelings because of the challenge that it poses to other views.
Our thoughts and prayers are very much with the family, friends and students of our esteemed colleague Fuat Deniz.
