The Assyrian Universal Alliance strongly condemns the cowardly attacks against buses carrying Christian Assyrian university students from their city of Qaraqosh (Baghdida), 40km east of Mosul, to the University of Mosul. A car bomb and a roadside bomb targeting the students exploded near the buses, injuring about 140 and killing a Christian shop owner near the blast scene.

This attack comes as part of an ongoing series of terrorist attacks and persecutions in Iraq aimed at Christians, who have been the target of certain Islamic fundamentalists. Attacks on monasteries and churches, looting and seizing of property by force, kidnappings, and forced conversions into Islam are happening under the watchful eyes of the coalition and Iraqi security forces in a clear attempt to force Assyrians permanently to leave their ancestral homeland.

The Assyrian Universal Alliance demands that governments who call for democracy, justice and human rights stand for the rights of the unarmed and unprotected Indigenous Assyrians of Iraq. We call upon the government of Iraq to take a firm stance to hunt down the perpetrators, bring them to justice and compensate the victims. We demand that the Iraqi and Arab international media loudly condemn these ungodly acts perpetrated against the very fabric of the communities of indigenous Christian Assyrians in Iraq.

At the same time, we call upon all countries and human rights organizations of the world to condemn these vicious deeds that have become a ritual for certain Islamic fundamentalist groups against the Christian Assyrians of Iraq, and to persuade the Iraqi government to support the demands of the Assyrians in Iraq by granting them autonomy in their respective geographical regions in the province of Assyria (northern Iraq).

Assyrian Universal Alliance