Dutch MP calls for autonomous Assyrian Christian region in Iraq's north
Iraq's Assyrian Christians are told by Muslims: "you Christians dogs, leave or die".
The Hague, 18 Nov. (AKI) - A Dutch member of parliament Joel Voordewind, is urging the Netherlands to help Iraq's Assyrian Christians establish their own northern autonomous region and police force, the Assyrian International News Agency reported on Thursday.
Voordewind's move comes after a spate of deadly attacks targeting Iraq's Christian minority of approximately 500,000, which has left its members in fear of their lives. Most want to emigrate.
Before the 2003 United States-led invasion and occupation of the country, there were around 800,000 Christians in Iraq.
Around 100,000 Iraqi Christians who have been left homeless have taken shelter in northern Iraq in the Plain of Nineveh.
Kurds, who were persecuted by late Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, were allowed to develop their own militia and police to defend themselves. They also have their own autonomous region in northern Iraq.
Voordewind, an MP for the Christian Union party, wants an Assyrian autonomous region to be governed and secured by its police and militia.
The region would be established in the Nineveh Plain in North Iraq, where around 100,000 Chistians have taken refuge since 2003.
"The three big groups, Kurds, Sunnis and Shias have their own police and militia, only the Assyrians do not have this," said Voordewind, quoted by AINA.
Voordewind is calling on the Kurds to help the Assyrians, arguing they should give the kind aid to Christian Assyirans which they have received from the international community.
"When I visited the Nineveh Plain in 2008, Assyrians showed me messages given to them from Muslims, saying 'you Christians dogs, leave or die,'" AINA cited Voordewind as saying.
"If we don't help them with an autonomous region," he adds, "they [Assyrians] will leave the country."
Voordewind has asked the minister of defence to help the Assyrians establish an autonomous region.
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The Assyrians where promised an autonomous region, when they helped the allies defeat the Ottamans, but the British betrayed them back in 1933
In the first century they were among the first people to embrace Christianity. Due to the numerous atrocities which befell them over the following centuries because of their religion and nationality, the Assyrians almost lost their identity as a nation. It was not until the middle of the 19th century, when Assyrians came in direct contact with the western world, that their existence attracted the attention of the outside world.
At this time the Assyrians were experiencing a cultural renaissance, and played an instrumental role in building modern schools, colleges and technical institutions in Iran, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East during the 19th and 20th centuries. Caught between the two warring parties of WWI, Assyrians suffered most destructive blows because of their religion and ethnicity.
First, they fell victim to the wholesale massacre inflicted upon Christians (Assyrians and Armenians alike) under the Ottoman Empire. Hundreds of thousands of Assyrians living as a semi-independent people under their religious and secular head, Patriarch Mar Shimon, in the Itakkari mountains in the southeastern part of Turkey, were driven out of their homeland and forced to join their brethern in the Urmia and Salamas districts in Iran. Then, they were encouraged to join the Allied Forces (British and Russians) in order to help them in the region.
Assyrians, willing to protect themselves and to defend their lives against unceasing attack by Turkish regular forces and local unfriendly people, threw in their lot with the Allies and fought bravely against all odds to repulse the blows coming from all sides. For their bravery in the victorious battles, they were called "Our Smallest Ally" by British historians.
In 1918, a few months before the end of the great war, the Assyrians were left alone and deprived of ammunition and other kinds of support, and had no choice but to retreat from Urmia via Hamadan in order to reach the British forces in Baghdad, Iraq. In this long and costly exodus, the Assyrians lost more than one-third of their population, because of the constant attack from all sides which was made on them as they fled. Many also fell victim to severe weather, epidemics, and all the various hardships which they suffered on their long and arduous trail. Exactly this same fate was shared by the Assyrians living in Tur Abdin and Midyat, of whom a great number, under the most devastating blows, were chased out of their homeland to find refuge in the northwest part of modern Syria.
In Baghdad, the Assyrians were settled in Baquba camps, where they were used to protect the newly established government of Iraq, as well as the interests of the British and their air bases. Able and battle-tested Assyrians were recruited in a special military task force named Levies under the British command.
In return for the loss of their homeland in Hakkari, Turkey, and in compensation of the stupendous losses which were inflicted on them during the Great War, the Assyrians were promised a safe and independent homeland by Britain, France, and Russia alike. At first the Assyrians insisted that this homeland be on the Hikkari Mountains, but later they were offered the Mosul district in Northern Iraq known as the "Assyrian Triangle." This promise was similar to others made by their powerful allies, and was not fulfilled.
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