Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, its indigenous people have been brutally persecuted. Their numbers have dwindled from the millions to 600,000. With no militias, no armies, and no weapons, these people have tried to survive in a world where their lives are worth less. Targeted for their Christian identity, targeted for their ethnic identity, targeted for their economic status, and targeted for their land - these people have known nothing but agony and despair since the official end of combat operations in Iraq. Facing racial Islam, religious persecution, criminal criminal opportunists in the cities, they flee to their ancestral homeland in the North. Here they are safe from extortion, threats, rape, murder, church bombings, and massacres. Here, however, they face poverty, political oppression, and cultural genocide in their own ancestral villages by Kurdish parties preparing to establish an independent Kurdistan at the expense of these people. Kurdistan is not indigenous. It is not their land. Rather than live under such conditions, they flee once more to Syria, Jordan, and Turkey. Here, these governments deny them any and all rights and benefits. Here, they squalor in poverty much worse than in Northern Iraq. Here, they watch their daughters as they are forced into prostitution and their sons forced to beg. Here, they wait. Here, they rot. Those that stay in the cities risk their lives every day. Those that stay in the North watch helplessly as the Kurds continue to wage cultural genocide against the world's oldest civilization. This is their story.
This story does not begin in 2003. It begins in WWI as the British stood by as the Young Turks, bent on Turkish nationalism sought out to crush the three Christian ethnic groups standing in the way of their imperial ambitions. They, with the help of Kurds and Persians, effectuated a systematic genocide against Assyrian Christians, Armenian Christians, and Pontic Greek Christians. 750,000 innocent Assyrian Christians lost their lives in one of the most horrific events in world history. The story then moves to the creation of a new Sunni Arab Iraqi government in the 1930s. One of its first acts was to eliminate the Assyrian Christian separatist threat and massacred 33,000 Assyrian Christians at Simele. Here, the term "Genocide" was coined. Then came the Ba'athi regime and the reign of Saddam Hussein. Trading their ethnic identity for safety, Assyrian Christians underwent a systematic process of Arabization. The story then picks back up in 2003 as George Bush smiles at us, whispering "Mission Accomplished."
WE ARE ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS. WE ARE NESTORIAN, WE ARE CHALDEAN CATHOLIC, WE ARE SYRIAC CATHOLIC, WE ARE SYRIAC ORTHODOX, AND WE ARE MARONITE CATHOLIC. WE ARE SILENT NO MORE. STAND WITH US.
