The Assyrian Democratic Organization
AMMAN- AINA– In April 2007, Mr. Nuri Kino, the award winning investigative reporter and film maker from Sweden, spent six grueling days in Amman, Jordan recording and witnessing the dreadful plight of the Iraqi Christian refugees.
By God: Six Days in Amman (PDF) is a grim and sobering report that will surely shed a new light on the truth and reality of what is taking place to the less known and less spoken victims of the war in Iraq, the Christian Assyrians (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs).
Threats, forced religious conversion, mutilated children, raped and killed nuns, church bombings, abductions and daily house break-ins have led to the flight of more than half of all Christian Assyrians from Iraq.
The majority of Assyrians have fled from Bagdad, Basra and Mosul. Many parts of Iraq are almost completely emptied of Assyrians. There is a systematic expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people; it started with the first coordinated bombings of churches in 2004.
The report of Nuri Kino is based on interviews with Assyrian refugees in Amman, Jordan and representatives of international relief agencies and church and human rights organizations working there.
“We traveled to Amman without any planned schedule. We wanted fate to decide whom we would meet. It turned out to be the right thing to do. One thing led to the other and it resulted in this report that lets the refugees present their own experiences. We also met with representatives from volunteer organizations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR and Jordanian authorities,” says Nuri Kino in his report.
The report has reached the US Congress, the British House of Common and the parliaments of other countries.
