The 93rd anniversary of the Simmele Massacre has been marked not only by commemorative events and statements from Assyrian institutions, churches and political parties in Iraq and the diaspora, but also by growing calls from Iraqi officials for the massacre formal recognition.
The Assyrians are among the oldest settled peoples of Beth Nahrin (Mesopotamia) and among the first to embrace Christianity. In the decades before the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, they fell victim to the Sayfo Genocide, which was planned by the Ottoman Turks and carried out in collaboration with allied Kurdish tribes.
His Holiness Mar Awa III, Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, made his first-ever visit to Romania from August 3 to 7. According to a press release from the Levant Institute, the visit took place in conjunction with the 14th World Congress for Syriac Studies and the 12th International Conference on Christian Arabic Studies, organised by the Levant Institute and the Romanian...
Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani on Friday paid tribute to the victims of the 1933 Simmele massacre on the 93rd anniversary of Assyrian Martyrs' Day, asserting that the Region will remain "a shared homeland" for all its communities.
Baghdad -- An Iraqi Christian woman has successfully challenged her official religious classification after being registered as a Muslim in government records. The ruling, which was upheld by Iraq's Court of Cassation, has been welcomed by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International, a global legal advocacy organization that defends religious freedom.
I was 11 years old the first time I was told Assyrians don't exist by a friend. I got home, slumped on a stool and snapped open a packet of prawn cocktail crisps. Assyrians are an Indigenous ethnic group from West Asia, tracing our ancestry to an ancient people. Parts of Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq make up our homeland. We speak the Neo-Aramaic Assyrian language.