Assyrians are the native and rightful owners of Assyria - not like the
ethnic Indians of Fiji, who were dumped on the Pacific Islands, as cheap
labour, to revive
the ailing economy of the British Empire or the ethnic Albanians, residues
of the Ottoman Janissaries2, who after falling from favour,
were dumped in the Balkans during the Ottoman rule and later during its
retreat from Europe in the First World War. The Arabs and Kurds are the
ethnic intruders, who have forcibly seized Assyria and claim it to be
theirs and no one else. In addition, the power brokers literally ripped
off Assyria, people and property, from the world map. The whole of
Mesopotamia, including Israel, in the Middle East, whose territory
extended from Jericho westward, to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea
were ravaged by the ferocity of the Arab Islamic mobs. Their fanaticism,
coupled with the upsurge of nationalist fervor, with later encouragement
from the Allies, swept their undisciplined mercenary troops and militias
throughout the Middle East in a state of barbaric euphoria, claiming the
whole Middle East Islamic. There was no room for the existing aboriginal
unbeliever (kafir) Christian and Jewish dwellers of the land to exercise
their natural rights to independence from their adversaries.
The
Middle East was officially described as "Arab" and endorsed by the
victorious allied powers and members of the League of Nations as Arab
Asia. The League Council
disallowed the indigenous Jews and Assyrians to seek restoration of their
usurped land. The Council
denied them the right to their traditional homeland. The Council
obliterated Assyria and dismembered Israel.
The Middle East has continued to erupt.
Like an active volcano, it continues with its spewing its deadly
poisonous gas and destruction of the land all around.
The Assyrians were denied political rights. They were politically
gagged. Their tribal and religious leaders were muzzled. They were
prevented from presenting their case to the League of Nations. They were
denied cultural, media and language rights. They were denied proper
Assyrian schools and limited their language education to three years only.
The recommended system of education for the Assyrians was of a very modest
elementary syllabus, making Arabic a compulsory subject. They were allowed
freedom of religion, but not freedom of worship i.e., the Assyrians were
allowed to worship at their church and home but were not allowed to
practice their Christian religion openly, freely or publicly.
Politically, nothing much has changed since. The Assyrians are obliged
to travel with passports from their domineering rulers incognito of their
Assyrian national identity. Thousands are still on the run, looking for a
place to work, rest and live in peace. Thousands of families have been
separated for years, stranded in several countries with little hope of
re-union with their immediate family members. In Jordan alone today, there
are over 30 to 40 thousand destitute Assyrians. They have gathered there seeking
a way out of their affliction. The Assyrians number over three (3)
million, of whom sixty per cent (60%) live in diaspora. They live in
discomfort, seeing their culture and identity being gradually eroded.
Their systematic persecution over the years has considerably reduced their
number in their ancestral homeland. The Assyrians are not extinct as many
are led to believe. Yet, the instability in the Middle East and
deteriorating conditions in Iraq have added to
their misery, forcing them to seek refuge elsewhere. Many live in Iraq in the cities of Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk,
Baghdad and Basrah and in villages and towns above the 36 parallel line in
the no-flight zone of Northern Iraq. The majority lives in USA, Canada,
and Western and Eastern European countries such as England, France,
Sweden, Holland, Russia, Georgia and Armenia. There are about 30 thousand
Assyrians in Australia, concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne and a few
hundred families in New Zealand.
The Arab/Islamic states allege that the infinitesimal number of
the Assyrians and other ethnic groups of the Middle East, no longer
qualifies them to claim their ancestral land. The indigenous remnants,
they allege, were residues of ancient kingdoms reduced to insignificant
minorities by prior conquests. These states claim that over time the
Assyrians lost their genuine identity, melted into the Arab/Islamic pot,
and became extinct. Persistence of the international community in
allowing the Islamic states to continue to use the archaic 'millet
provision' is to ensure that fragmentation of the Assyrian people into
several denominational groups remains so and continues until the word
'Assyria' is completely phased out. They think that such a policy will
eventually weaken the Assyrian resistance, give in and accept citizenship
of the Islamic states as a fait accompli. The fact remains that the
Assyrians have become stronger in their resolve of uniting their ranks
regardless of the Islamic foreign citizenship they carry.
Excuse of the culprit governments is the official document, namely, the
"Decision of the Council of the League of Nations Relating to the
Application of the Principles of Article 22 of the Covenant to IRAQ".
This document encourages the Islamic states to pursue this overt
racial and undemocratic path for the total effacement of the Assyrian
nation. As a result, these Arab/Islamic states were given the legal
mandate by the international community to possess Mesopotamia without
consideration to the democratic and human rights of the indigenous
peoples.
The
Assyrians are racially Semitic yet, are in many ways, totally different
from their Islamic neighboring countries. There are no common grounds between
Arabs and Assyrians in language, religion and culture. Islamic
communities, in general, are predominantly Asiatic in character,
conservative to the point of fanaticism, vengeful and infamous for their
unforgiving acts of vendetta and blood feuds. The Assyrians are
liberal-minded, progressive, apt to change and more sociable. The cultural
life between the Arabs and Assyrians is vastly different to the point that
they do not mix socially. The Arabs live in a closely regulated religious environment.
Their conservative attitude reflects inherent cultural animosity towards
other cultures at home and abroad. The Assyrians are inspired by their
historical past that links their roots to their ancestral land Assyria.
The Arabs want to revive their past glory of Islamic conquests and expand
farther by adding more territory to their (umma) nation through constant
incursions. Because of the deep division and irreconcilable differences,
assimilation of the Assyrians is out of the question. Islamic states will
never democratize their government systems in line with the Western definition
of democracy. Continued persecution of the Assyrians in the Middle East
has imperiled their very existence. They have been dispossessed and denied
their human rights cruelly and unjustly before the very eyes of the
international community, who claim to be advocates of human rights and
promoters of democracy. Islam advocates and promotes multiculturalism,
outside its domain, because it serves as a unifying force among its
community members and allows it a stronger foothold on foreign soil
abroad. In this way, they gain strength and demand change to certain laws
in defiance of the majority rule. At home, the Islamic government is
against multiculturalism, as is the case now in Iran, Algeria, the Sudan,
Nigeria, Pakistan and belatedly Indonesia. It openly confronts
multiculturalism and quashes it by applying the Millet Provision
under the (Share'a) Islamic law - a pretext that in addition to freedom of
worship, all subjects are equal citizens before the law, enjoy equal civic
and cultural rights and equal employment opportunities. It sounds
democratic. But in reality, all Arab/Islamic government systems are hedged
between autocracy and theocracy.
The spread of certain cultures and increase in their population does
not necessarily mean that such cultures are progressive, acceptable or
popular. There is no justification for their intrusion on other people's
rights or imposition of their culture and lifestyle on other smaller
nations just because of their sheer number. Claiming the whole of the
Middle East as Arab/Islamic and dividing it inequitably among themselves
is unjustifiable. The Arabs allege that the Assyrians having lost their
country ages ago and not living on their land, whether voluntarily or
arbitrarily, have forfeited their right to retrieve it - a weak argument
by any standard that would fail to convince world opinion, as evidenced by
the Jewish issue at the UN that was put to vote and won restoration of the
statehood of Israel in May 1948. In recent years, several Balkan states in
Eastern Europe were in the same predicament as is Assyria now, and to a
certain degree Poland went through a similar ordeal in the
mid-20th century. So did Greece during the First World War of
1914-1918 and Spain in the mid-fifteen century. They drove out their
invaders, ended foreign occupation of their countries and legitimately
reclaimed their sovereignty. The Arab and Kurd intruders, who in their
heyday, were scattered all over the Middle Eastern region, grabbed and
settled on other people's lands arbitrarily. They claim that the whole
region belongs exclusively to them and no other.
Many options to resolving the outstanding issue of Assyria are open to
the United Nations. One option worth considering is the return of the
Assyrians to their homeland in the highlands of the Mosul Province,
including the Khabur region, with the assistance of the United Nations. If
the international community could resettle seven to nine hundred thousand
Albanians in Kossovo, Yugoslavia, at an estimated cost of 11 to 13 billion
U.S. dollars, what deters it from considering resettlement of the
Assyrians in their own portion of the Mosul province of Assyria?
The Assyrians are neither a millet nor a minority; they are a small
nation - they should be treated as a separate and distinct people in their
own right. The population of East Timor compared with Indonesia's over 200
million is not a minority but a small nation. Had Kuwait been swallowed up
by Iraq, the Kuwaitis being of Arab stock, would have been considered a
minority in a population of 14 million Iraqis. Being Arabs, the Kuwaitis
would have ultimately been fused into the Iraqi Arab majority. Assyrians
are not Arabs; they never were and shall never be. They are totally
dissimilar and ethnically different in language, religion and culture. The
mandatory powers feigned ignorance of this very fact and failed to
recognise these fundamental differences. The Assyrians are a small
disinherited nation.
After World War I, the Allies did not divide the
'liberated'
territories according to the historic need and legitimate rights of the
indigenous people. Had positive action been taken, it would have created a
healthy equilibrium and struck a sound balance of power among the
countries of the Middle East. Restoration of Assyria, in addition to
Israel, would have added to
the stability in the region and consolidated peace in
the Middle East, confirming the legitimacy of Israel and Assyria as a
matter of fact. Instead, they left the Assyrians in a hostile environment,
showing little interest if at all, in the plight of this small
dispossessed nation.
Since
establishment of the United Nations at the end of World War II, in the
late forties, it has played a
greater role in supporting other subjugated people to obtain their
independence from foreign rule, yet the Assyrian cause still struggles for
recognition and active encouragement. The dispossessed Assyrians need to
be granted an independent voice and the status of a disinherited,
stateless nation to represent its dispersed people at international level
to be able to resurrect its case and present it to world bodies.
Redress of this long awaited issue, to rightfully reclaim their homeland,
is long overdue.
Notes:
1. Terra: unknown territory; unexplored country; Nullius: Void of legal effect.
2. Janissary or Mamluke:
Christian children raised as slaves in the Islamic faith
and trained as special (kamikaze) soldiers to protect the Sultan
and his interests throughout the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan gave
the Janissaries full authority in levying tax. They were
responsible to the Sultan and reported direct to him. They
grew in strength and became very powerful and influential. They
were known for their notoriety, for their wheeling and dealing
and blackmail. Other
Janissaries, of either gender, were also used as domestic
servants for the elite and as public janitors, doing menial jobs
and running errands for their Turkish masters, especially the
military corps. In times of war, the Janissaries were used by the Turkish
armies as human shields in their attacks of the enemy troops and
invasion of enemy fortifications. The Turks used the Janissary
as a dispensable commodity.
The Janissaries, growing in manpower and military
strength, the Ottoman Turks feared them and decided to get rid
of them. The
Ottoman government put the Janissaries to the sword en masse.
Those that were spared the sword were dumped in Turkish
colonies, spread all over the Balkans and North Africa.
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