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“I believe democracy in <\/SPAN> Though <\/SPAN> But in the year and a half since Saddam Hussein was removed from power in Iraq, that has begun to change, with minority activists beginning to speak openly of their hopes that a ripple effect from next door may bring changes at home. And here in <\/SPAN> In late October, more than 2,000 Assyrian Christians in the provincial capital, <\/SPAN> Nimrod Sulayman, a former member of the Syrian Communist Party’s central committee, said Hasakah’s proximity to <\/SPAN> The Christian Mr. Kirakos’s presidential run – which he announced in September on www.elaph.com , a pro-democracy Web site – is illegal, as <\/SPAN> Newyork Times ? QAMISHLI – Syria,The Iraqi election next month may be evoking skepticism in much of the world, but here in northeastern Syria, home to concentrations of several ethnic minorities, it is evoking a kind of earnest hope. “I believe democracy in Iraq must succeed,” Vahan Kirakos, a Syrian of Armenian ethnicity, said recently. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-assyrian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNewyork Times ? QAMISHLI – <\/SPAN>
<\/SPAN>The Iraqi election next month may be evoking skepticism in much of the world, but here in northeastern <\/SPAN>
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Nimrod Sulayman, an ex-official of <\/SPAN>
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“This Assyrian protest in Hasakah was caused by a personal dispute, but the way the people wanted their problem solved was a result of the Iraqi impact,” Mr. Sulayman said. “They see that demonstrating is a civilized way to express a position.”
“Since the war in <\/SPAN>
Mr. Sulayman noted that members of minorities in Hasakah had also been energized by a sense of brotherhood with their counterparts in <\/SPAN>
Taher Sfog, the secretary general of <\/SPAN>
“Kurds in <\/SPAN>
In fact, the Hussein government had long been estranged from <\/SPAN>
Emmanuel Khosaba, a spokesman for the Assyrian Democratic Movement, a political party representing Iraq’s Assyrian Christian minority, said Syrian political life could not help but be influenced by Iraq.
“In <\/SPAN>
“The interaction between minorities in <\/SPAN>
Despite their sometimes startling optimism about an Iraqi democracy’s longer-term prospects, the Syrian minority leaders became more sober when discussing the violence in <\/SPAN>
Bachir Isaac Saadi, the chairman of the political bureau of the Assyrian Democratic Organization, said that throughout Syria, anger over the American presence in Iraq had set off a sharp rise in Islamist sentiment, which was creating difficulties for Syria’s Christian minority. “Christians in <\/B><\/SPAN>
<\/SPAN><\/B>Though the increase in Islamist feeling is troubling, minority activists say, fear of the government and of publicly discussing minority rights has eased to a degree which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
Mr. Kirakos, the Armenian activist, has even begun a bid for <\/SPAN>
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“I carry a Syrian citizenship which is not equal to Ahmed’s citizenship,” he said, using the common Muslim name as shorthand for <\/SPAN>
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By KATHERINE ZOEPF<\/SPAN>
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\n30-12-2004 <\/SPAN>
\nܢܗܪܝܐ <\/SPAN><\/P>
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