Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Assyrians Are Being Killed Out Of Their Own Homeland

The following is a list of Assyrians killed in the last ten days:

-February 20: Gunmen entered the house of Aishwa Maroki, 59, and killed him and his two sons Mokhlas, 31, and Bassim, 25.
-February 20: Adnan al-Dahan, 57, was found with bullet wounds to his head in the northern Mosul district of al-Belladiyat. He had been kidnapped from his grocery shop the week before in the neighborhood of Al-Habda, also in northern Mosul.
-February 17: The bullet-riddled body of Wissam George, a 20-year-old Assyrian Christian, was recovered on a street in the south Mosul residential neighbourhood of Wadi al-Ain.
-February 16: Zia Toma, a 21-year-old engineering student, was killed and Ramsin Shmael, a 22-year-old pharmacy student, wounded.
-February 15: Rayan Salem Elias, a Chaldean Christian who ran a business dealing in a traditional meat dish, was killed outside his home in East Mosul.
-February 14: Fatukhi Munir, an Assyrian Catholic, was gunned down inside his shop in a drive-by shooting.

- aina.org

The matter in which these grave crimes have been handled by the Kurdish and Iraqi governments displays irresponsibility and inability in governing and maintaining even the most minimal semblance of order, as well as a general and disgusting lack of concern for this indigenous people. Also, the overall situation of the Assyrians/Chaldeans in Iraq has not been handled at all by the United States and British governments. Promises by both the Bush and Obama administrations to protect the Assyrians/Chaldeans of Iraq and to ensure they would have proper representation and rights in the new Iraqi government have not been kept.

These crimes were also strategically committed around the same time the Iraqi elections will be taking place (March 5th - 7th), perhaps to distract and deter us from exercising our rights as Iraqi citizens in order to further prevent us from having protection and rights.

The Assyrians/Chaldeans have taken to the streets in a peaceful protest in Mosul, the very place where many of the crimes were committed. These individuals are the very definition of brave. It is time to do our part. Let us all contact the leaders of our numerous organizations, parties, and Churches, both Assyrian and non-Assyrian alike. Let us shout for the sake of those who have been silenced, let us run for the sake of those who have been trampled.

It has been made apparent that because we are Assyrian/Chaldean or Christian or both, we are not welcome anywhere in the Middle East. They have been killing us for these reasons but we are now letting the world know that we will always be and we will never die.

I urge all Assyrians and anyone else who cares about injustice to please copy and paste this as a note on Facebook and tag all of your friends.

Rita Lazar