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ALLEGED GENOCIDE CLAIMS - 3

Assyrian Universal Alliance-Australia Chapter From: http://www.aua.net/assyrian_genocide.htm

ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE

( SYRIACS, NESTORIANS, CHALDEANS, )

IN MESOPOTAMIA

SUBMISSION

NSW LOCAL GOVERNMENT

FAIRFIELD CITY COUNCIL

2002

CONTENTS

· Assyrian petition

· The Assyrian Genocide During World War

· Conclusion and Recognition

ASSYRIAN PETITION

TO THE NSW LOCAL GOVERNMENT for recognition of the genocide perpetrated against the Assyrian people during 1914-1918 and onwards.

The Assyrian people fell victim to the genocide against Christians in the Ottoman empire and its aftermaths and today is continuing to face state sponsored denial causing the truth to be distorted and history to be rewritten as an arbitrary fable which systemically prevents mankind from taking any shielding lessons from history which only can preclude the demons of genocide from having their sway ever again.

Whereas the Assyrian genocide is either forgotten or even still unknown in the world and at any rate not recognised,

Whereas the Assyrian people in its historical homeland in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey suffers from attacks on its very existence and national identity by way of disenfranchisement, oppression, expulsion as well as forced imposition of dominant majority cultures in the sense of ethnocide;

Whereas, the Assyrian community in Australia enjoys the recognition of its unique national character and a dedicated promotion of its cultural rights by the Australian Government;

We herewith appeal to the Australian government and the competent institutions of the Australian state for an express act of official recognition of the Assyrian genocide.

Thereby we want to stem the tide of an ever more aggressive denial of that crime against humanity by way of distortion and suppression of the full historical truth.

Thereby we want to honour the memory of all victims of that barbarism with our untiring efforts to attain the justice of a living memory for them and to prevent any further horrors of that sort by educating all mankind towards the guiding ideals of humanity and solidarity among all people. However, this can be achieved only through the clear acceptance of the historical responsibility flowing from that knowledge, as it is written "The truth will set you free".

Thereby we want to actively promote the reconciliation of all involved in the tragedy of genocides and its unabated aftermaths, victims and perpetrators alike, through the spiritual courage to brake the chain of historical repetition by recognition of the historical truth as well as the strong will to mend and heal the wounds so that out of the ashes there will be new life.

This recognition will help our Assyrian nation and its organisations in their attempt to strengthen our national existence in the homeland as well as in the diaspora, to attain our human rights to cultural expression and democratic political participation. As this friendly act of recognition will lead to initiate international awareness of the Assyrian nation's rights to existence and preservation which will help our nation to find its rightful place among the nations of the world and to creatively make its special contribution to the universal further cultural development of mankind.

We wish that the oppressors may take a real lesson that will take care of the unremembered past victims but also today’s victims of that first, but nevertheless still ongoing genocide, ethnocide and their denials.

Thus we wish that the untold holocaust of the Assyrian nation may not be instrumentalised to blind-fold the world but that its remembrance will be a blessing for the world by increasing the world community's awareness to fight the evils and demons of genocide in a brotherly spirit encompassing all mankind.

¨ The Assyrian Genocide During World War I.

The twentieth century has, however, been the darkest chapter of Assyrian history. When Turkey entered first World War in November 1914, Assyrians were told that the liberation of the Ottoman Empire was near. It was a time of promises for an independent statehood. The Assyrians, by request sided with the Allies, first with the Russians then with the British forces. The hope for freedom and a national home promised to them on the sacred soil of their ancestors was instead met with the genocide of their people perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks, causing the massacre of more than 750,000 indigenous Assyrians (two thirds of their total population in Turkey) and loss of 750 of their villages, as well as the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians and over 1 million Hellenes . The Assyrian Genocide was a part of the same drawn-out, systematic official policy implemented under the cover of war on the Armenians and the Hellenes and remains today an untold Holocaust. As we all know, the Young Turk nationalists planned to create a Pan-Turkish state or “Turan” stretching from the Bosphorus to the frontier of China, and these three indigenous Christian nations were a hurdle they had to overcome at all costs. Actually, Dr. Behaeddin Shakir (one of the Young Turks’ chief ideologues) told the assembly at the 1911 Congress of the CUP in Salonika that, “the nations that remain from the old times in our empire are akin to foreign and harmful weeds that must be uprooted. To clear our land…” The description used here being identical to that used by the Nazi’s to describe the Jews just before the Holocaust.

In August 1914, the Turks began this policy by violently persecuting the Assyrians residing in the areas around Hakkiari, Mardin and Midyat.

The Turkish government began by singling out the able-bodied Assyrian men as the most likely to resist. This was easy enough as most of them had already been drafted into the army. Military commanders were told to separate them from other soldiers. Some were transferred into labour battalions, where they were worked to death or killed by hunger, exposure or disease for which the authorities would provide no relief. Others were simply taken to a secluded spot and murdered. Some Assyrian soldiers, bound together and defenceless, were forced to march along isolated roads where they were subject to pre-arranged attacks by Kurdish tribesmen. Many thousands of soldiers were killed in this manner.

The government then turned to Assyrians in the civilian population. First, to make their victims defenceless, the government denied the Assyrian citizens the right to keep and bear arms. Soldiers and police were assigned the task of confiscating weapons. Homes were ransacked, and many Assyrians suspected of having weapons were tortured. In fear, some acquired weapons, just so that they could have something to turn in to the authorities and thus avoid torture.

Secondly, the Turkish government rounded up the leaders and the educated of the Assyrian communities in the larger cities - those most likely to speak out and be heard. These people were deported to places where they died in a similar way to the soldiers.

With most of the Assyrian men out of the way, the populace stripped of their weapons, and their leaders exiled or dead, the Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire were defenceless. The government then moved in for the kill. Moving from village to village, police and soldiers gathered together the Assyrian males, marched them out to some secluded spot, and slaughtered them.

A few days later the remaining Assyrians in the villages – women, children and some elderly – would be gathered together and led on a forced deportation. These became death marches. Again, the Assyrians were subject to prearranged attacks. Prisoners were released from Turkish jails for the sole purpose of attacking convoys of Assyrian deportees. Muslim villagers and Kurdish tribes attacked the convoys, raping, killing and looting them. Other convoys were simply massacred by soldiers. Those not killed in the deportations were led to concentration camps in the Mesopotamian desert, where countless more died. This process is confirmed by the many eyewitness accounts left to us, in particular those in Shall This Nation Die? by Fr. Joseph Naayem.

In 1915, according to Mor Ignatius Severius Afrem Barsaum, late Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, a documented 156 Syriac Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed throughout the Assyrian homeland. This figure does not include those belonging to the Church of the East and Syriac and Chaldean Catholic Assyrians. In December 1916, the New York Times reported that Mor Ignatius Abdullah II, the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch at that time, had been “Murdered in His Residence by a Band of Turks.”

Being at this time at war with Russia, the Turks did not limit themselves to killing their own Assyrian citizens. In the beginning of January 1915 and in mid-1918, Ottoman troops entered the region on the western shore of Lake Urmia, part of the Persian Empire, where they massacred all up nearly 100,000 Assyrians and tens of thousands of Armenians. The 1915 massacres are described in detail in the Blue Book (Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire), where a chapter containing these documents is dedicated to the Assyrians. This was later published as a separate booklet, Treatment of the Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire, though when the original book was translated into French, the chapter on the Assyrians was left out.

Apart from those who managed to survive the death marches and massacres, there were others. Through the efforts of their Patriarch Mar Joseph Emmanuel II Thomas and the aid of the Vatican and French Government, the greater part of the Chaldean Assyrians residing in the Mosul vilayet escaped the killings. Official pardons were also issued to different Assyrian communities in Kharput, Mardin and Diyarbakir, though this was only after the majority of them had been decimated.

There were also two centres of resistance: Tur-‘Abdin and Hakkiari (later Urmia) where Assyrians banded together to defend themselves against the attacks from the Turks and their Kurdish and Persian allies. The greatest leaders in the last two areas were General Agha Petros who corresponded with Andranik Pasha and Mar Benyamin Shimun, Catholicos-Patriarch of the Church of the East, who was assassinated by a Kurdish chieftain in March 1918.

After the Ottoman Empire was dissolved many Assyrians remained within the Turkish border. From 1919 a new wave of killing began as the popular nationalist regime under Kemal Ataturk, which shared the Young Turks’ desire for ethnic purity, came to power. Assyrian lands that had become part of Syria and Iraq were again invaded, resulting in the massacre of many people. Within Turkey, ethnic cleansing cost the lives of thousands more Assyrians, many of whom left during the great purge of 1924.

After Ataturk’s westernisation and his attempt to turn the formerly multinational Ottoman state into a solely Turkish one, the rights of Assyrians were abolished and persecutions continue to this day. By 1922, the Assyrian population in Turkey had been reduced to less than 200,000 people. Now the number of Assyrians in Turkish Mesopotamia is barely 3,000 and the Turkish Government does not recognise Assyrians as an ethnic minority within its borders, preferring to call us “Turco-Semites” or “Semitic Turks”.

¨ Conclusion and Recognition

It is clear from all evidence presented that Assyrians did suffer in the same Genocide as did the Armenians, Hellenes and the Jewish. This recognition will help our Assyrian nation and its organisations in their attempt to strengthen our national existence in the homeland as well as in the diaspora and to attain our human rights to cultural expression and democratic political participation. This act of recognition will as a leading example of credibility enable us to initiate international awareness of the Assyrian nation's rights to existence and preservation. Only then can our nation succeed in finding its rightful place among the nations of the world and in creatively making its special contribution to the universal cultural and further development of mankind.

Thus we wish that this Assyrian untold holocaust may not be instrumentalised to blind-fold the world but that its remembrance be a blessing for the world by increasing the world community's awareness to fight the evils and demons of genocide in a brotherly spirit.

Trusting that you will appreciate the urgent character of this petition and convinced that the increase in mutual awareness and friendly co-operation will greatly help for a better future of our nation, we remain respectfully in anticipated wait of your favourable response.

Hermiz Shahen

Secretary,

Assyrian Universal Alliance-Australia Chapter