PRESS RELEASE: Assyrians Demonstrate in San Jose (13/03/2003)

About The Assyrian Christians in the Middle East & Iraq

Today’s Assyrians are the direct descendants of the ancient Assyrian-Babylonian inhabitants of Mesopotamia, a land covering much of modern Iraq, Kuwait, southern Turkey, and Syria. They are predominantly Christian and are said to be the first people to accept the teaching of Jesus Christ in the First Century A.D. Assyrians are sometimes known in different Middle Eastern countries by their religious affiliation as Nestorians, Chaldeans, Jacobites, and Syrian Orthodox (Syriacs). The language of the Assyrian people is Aramaic or Neo-Aramaic (Syriac) to be more precise.

Between 1915 and 1918, over 500,000 Assyrians were systematically massacred in the hands of the Turkish, Arab, Kurdish, and Persian forces in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. In 1933, only a few months after Iraq’s admission to the League of Nations, another massacre was committed by the Iraqi army against three thousands unarmed Assyrian villagers in North Iraq.

Between 1988 and 1991, the Assyrians were targeted by the Iraqi army’s infamous Anfal operations. Many villages, historic churches and monasteries were destroyed and thousands of Assyrians either lost their lives or were forced to emigrate to other countries.

As the only indigenous population of Iraq, Assyrians are committed to rebuilding a free and democratic Iraq with the support of the United States and her allies. Assyrians of Iraq demand equal rights under a new Iraqi constitution and protection under a secular government in Iraq in which the Christians are fairly represented.