WE CALL ON THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY AND THE PUBLIC OPINION TO STAND UP FOR THE SYRIAC PEOPLE

Our Syriac people (Assyrians-Chaldean-Aramean) is one of the oldest and indigenous peoples of the Middle East. Since World War I, however we the Syriacs, have been brought to the brink of extinction by genocides in conflicts of interest between different regional and international powers.

In and after the civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1975, hundreds of thousands of Syriac-Maronites were forced to leave their homeland. Then the war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s unfortunately had the same result. Furthermore, after the military coup in 1980 in Turkey, intensive fascist repression and unsolved, extrajudicial killings forced the Syriacs of Turabdin to flee their homeland. After the people’s uprising in Syria in 2011, the civil war that followed turned Syria into a quagmire. Attacks against Syriacs by barbaric jihadist groups and the atrocities of the even more barbaric ISIS, forced the Syriac-Assyrians to leave Khabour region of Northeastern Syria and the Nineveh Plain (Northern Iraq) – again Syriac-Assyrians had to flee their millennia-old homeland of Bethnahrin.

Due to the racist, jihadist and ethnic-cleansing mindset of status-quo countries, millions of Syriacs have, since the 1980s, migrated from the Middle East to countries all over the world. Tens of thousands more have been sacrificed to other people’s war of interest. Their properties and possessions have been confiscated. Their monasteries, churches and businesses burned to the ground. Syriacs were deprived of their ancient homeland by the politics of demographic change. Syriacs who survived the 1915 genocide and the following wars in the Middle East, are now again in danger of extermination from their ancient homeland with the Turkish invasion of North-East Syria. As Bethnahrin National Council, MUB it is our national, moral and human duty to oppose attacks and massacres on our Syriac people irrespective of name and denomination and peoples of the region.

As a historical Syriac movement we oppose all politics of extermination from our homeland. When will international powers and institutions stop this policy of extermination of our people and all Christians from the Middle East? The wounds of the Syriac people are still fresh and continue bleeding from 1915 to the present. Turkey’s invasion into North East Syria accelerates this bleeding and puts the future of Syriacs in the Middle East in existential danger. Therefore, we urge and call upon our people to stand up and raise their voices. To stand together with our brothers in Syria in order to stop Turkey’s war policies and to ensure the future existence in our homeland. We trust that our people of the Gozarto province of Syria will resist by not leaving their homeland.

We, the Bethnahrin National Council, stand with our people in all political and military circumstances – unconditionally and until our last standing member. We will defend our towns and villages and values to the last drop of our blood. It is of vital importance that our people mobilize themselves to defend their identity by coming together in national unity both inside and outside Syria. It also requires international powers as the UN, the EU, the USA and Russia to take immediate action to take away the clear and present dangers to the Syriac people and to ensure their life in their ancient homeland. We demand that they stop the bloodshed and the destruction of this unjust war.

National Council of Bethnahrin
Presidential Council