In an era when history is increasingly consumed through short videos, algorithms and fleeting online trends, a group of young Assyrian activists in Germany is attempting something both ambitious and quietly radical: to restore a long-marginalized history to the digital public square, without mythmaking or ideology.
Under the patronage of President Masoud Barzani and His Holiness Patriarch Mar Awa III, head of the Assyrian Church of the East, the Kurdistan Region will lay the foundation stone for a memorial commemorating the Simmele Massacre. The ceremony is scheduled for Sunday, January 4, 2026, at 1:00 p.m. local time in the Directorate of Culture in Simmele town, Duhok province.
Damascus -- Syria said Thursday a suicide bomber who killed a security forces member in Aleppo on New Year's Eve was in the Islamic State group, which planned attacks on churches and gatherings. ISIS recently increased its attacks in areas of Syria controlled by the Damascus authorities, and was blamed for an attack last month in Palmyra that killed three Americans.
The Chaldean patriarch, Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, has received threats from Islamic groups based in Iraq and Iran following a misinterpretation of a message delivered during the Christmas Mass, according to Chaldean Press. During the liturgical celebration, the patriarch used the term "normalization" in a spiritual sense, exhorting the faithful to reconcile and live in peace with one another.
For more than a century and a half, Eastern Christian peoples, particularly the Assyrians, have endured massacres, displacement, and structural statelessness. At the same time, their ecclesiastical institutions have survived.
Baghdad -- Iraq's new Parliament convened this week for the first time since the November elections, opening its sixth legislative term with the familiar rituals of state: verses from the Quran, constitutional citations, and solemn oaths sworn in Arabic and Kurdish.