03/05/2015

Demonstration and protest action: "Stop the destruction of Christian life in Syria and Iraq!" Start: Saturday, March 7, 2015 at 2 pm Meeting place: Gutenbergplatz in Mainz

Protests against IS in Mainz

Photo: Assyrian refugees meet in front of a church in Hassake, Syria. Photo by kind permission of the Assyrian Church in Beirut.

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) supports the call of the Assyrian Association in Germany (Zentralverband der assyrischen Vereinigungen in Deutschland, ZAVD) and its European sections to gather for a demonstration in Mainz next Saturday. "The destruction of Christian life in Syria and Iraq must be stopped – and there must be effective international measures to protect the people from being attacked by the barbaric IS-jihadists," said Dr. Kamal Sido, the STP's Middle East consultant. "The Assyrians/Aramaeans/Chaldeans must not be left alone again, 100 years after the genocide in the Ottoman Empire. Now, it will be the descendants of the survivors of the genocide of 1915 who will be abducted, raped and murdered," says Sido. Thus, fighters of the terrorist organization IS had attacked several Assyrian villages in the northeastern Syrian province of Al-Hasakah on February 23, 2015. Although about 10,000 Assyrians were able to escape, at least 350 have apparently been abducted by the Islamists. According to Assyrian informants, the IS had forced the Christians to remove the crosses from their churches in the region three weeks before. In addition, the terrorist group raised the so-called head tax for Christians, threatening to kill anyone who would not pay. Before the attack of the IS, the villages had been protected by Kurdish and Assyrian Aramaic militias – but they could not fend off this attack because they were ill-equipped.

According to estimates, about 30,000 to 50,000 of the 2.5 million Christians who lived in Syria before the Civil War are members of the Assyrian Church of the East. Most of the Assyrians live along the river Khabur in the province of Al-Hasakah, as well as in the city Qamishli in the far northeast of the country. The Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities are now between the fronts of the civil war. Hundreds of thousands were driven out of the country, kidnapped, raped or murdered. More than 300,000 people have fallen victim to the devastating civil war in Syria. About 1.5 million were wounded and 3.2 million were forced to flee.

The call for the demonstration is also supported by various Assyrian, Yazidi and Christian organizations and associations from the Middle East.