Assyrian Christians

Turkish lawmaker George Aslan caused a controversy by delivering a Christian message to Assyrians in their Syriac language.

Kurdish news service Rudaw reported on Tuesday that Syrian Christians living near the Turkish border are taking up arms to protect their villages from invading Turkish forces and their Syrian allies.

Turkey’s Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian Christian communities, who predominated in the region before its colonisation by Turkic Muslims, were subjected to a “staggered campaign of genocide” from 1894 to 1924, which reduced them from 20 per cent of the population to less than 2 per cent, according to Israeli researchers. 

The future of Christianity in its cradle of Iraq is contingent upon the establishment of a separate province for the persecuted minority, an Iraqi member of parliament recently elected to represent Assyrian Christians argued in an interview with Breitbart News.

Representatives from various ethnoreligious minority groups in Iraq – including Christians, Yazidis, and Turkmen – expressed distress towards Kurds voting “yes” to Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence this week, with some saying the referendum was “illegal” and “forced.”

The president of northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, in commemorating the 84th anniversary of the former Iraqi kingdom’s massacre of thousands of Christians in the country, declared that history would not repeat itself in an independent Kurdistan, vowing that the Kurds will protect the “demands and rights” of Assyrian Christians.

A militia that primarily represents Assyrian Christians in Syria’s northeastern al-Hasakah province confirms to Breitbart News that not all Christians in Syria support the war-ravaged country’s dictator Bashar al-Assad, as common knowledge has suggested.

Not all former inhabitants of the diverse Iraqi city of Mosul, once considered the heartland of Iraq’s Christian community, will be able to return once it is recaptured from the Islamic State by the U.S.-backed Iraqi military forces and their allies.

The din of bullets, mortars and bombs in the northern Iraqi town of Bartella was replaced momentarily by a sound not heard there for more than two years: the peal of church bells.

Iraqi security forces backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and in collaboration with Kurdish Peshmerga troops and a Christian militia have besieged the Iraqi Christian town of Qaraqosh as part of the offensive to liberate the nearby city of Mosul from the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), reports CNN.

Between 5,200 and 15,000 known victims are buried in some of the mass graves scattered across Iraq and Syria by Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists, the Associated Press (AP) has found through exclusive interviews, satellite photos, and research.

Members of various ethno-religious minority groups in the Middle East – including Assyrian Christians, Yezidis, and Shiite Turkmen – told Breitbart News that the Obama administration’s declaration recognizing and condemning genocide at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has been inconsequential and has failed to accomplish much.

In a joint statement released Sunday, the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch and the Syriac Catholic Patriarch commemorated the second anniversary of the Islamic State’s occupation of Mosul and the Nineveh Plain, chronicling their atrocities and demanding the immediate liberation of ISIS-controlled lands.

Christian Assyrian forces launched a counterattack against the Kurdish police Asayish in northern Syria’s Qamishli.

The Chaldean bishop of Aleppo, Antoine Audo, reported Wednesday that in only five years of conflict and persecution, the Christian population in Syria has been reduced by two thirds, from 1.5 million to only 500,000 today.

The European Union (EU) has recognized the mass slaughter of Christians at the hands of the barbaric Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) as genocide, but the Obama administration has yet to offer the same designation to the religious minority group.

Multiple reports have indicated that the Kurdish Democratic Union Party’s militia (YPG) in northern Syria attacked the Assyrian Christians in the region, leaving several people dead.

As the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) crackdown on Christians continues, the theocratic regime plans to turn an illegally confiscated Assyrian church into an “Islamic prayer center.”

While nominally working against a common enemy—the Islamic State (ISIS)—the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a U.S.-designated terrorist group, has occupied a number of Christian Assyrian villages in Iraq. The Marxist group has also invaded a home owned by a commander of the anti-ISIS Christian militia Dwekh Nawsha.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) released ten Assyrian Christians they kidnapped over nine months ago.

Christians in Iraq and Syria are losing their people and religion to the brutal Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), declares the Assyrian Army’s commander-in-chief.

Hundreds of Christians have teamed up with many Muslims in the ranks of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s army to prevent the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) from conquering the biblical town of Sadad, according to the leader of the Syriac Orthodox church.

The Assyrian Army is in dire need of military support from the United States to protect Christian communities in Iraq and Syria against the genocide they are facing at the hands of the barbaric Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), according to a decorated American military veteran advising the force.

The church of Saint George in Baghdad, which was closed down in 2007 after being firebombed by Islamic militants, was finally reopened Monday, but local clergy worry that there are no longer any Assyrian Christians left to worship there.

Assyrian Christians living in Sweden have been targeted with a string of threatening messages linked to the Islamic State, including demands that they “convert or die.”

An American-backed Syrian Kurdish militia has joined forces with some Arab rebels and members of an Assyrian Christian group to launch an assault against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Raqqa, the jihadist group’s de-facto capital in Syria, according to a statement obtained by Reuters.

The Islamic State has released a videotaped execution of three Assyrian Christian hostages, captured during a February offensive in Syria. The lives of hundreds more Christian captives remain in the balance, a point the savages emphasized by making three of them beg for ransom payments on camera.

Kurdish leader Saleh Muslim argued this week that the overthrow of Bashar Assad’s brutal regime in Syria would be a disaster for the entire world.

Small Christian militias continue to fight for Iraq–men determined to stop the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) from destroying their homeland and heritage. The Assyrian fighters are one of many groups profiled in the past year who are willing to stand up to the radical Islamic group.

One of Syria’s most senior Catholics has issued an impassioned plea to young Syrians, begging them to stay. Describing the exodus of Syria’s young as a “tsunami”, Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregorios III warned that the scale of youth immigration

A Canadian Jewish businessman has spearheaded efforts to rescue Iraqi Yazidi and Christian girls from slavery after the girls were captured by ISIS troops, using money donated privately by business contacts. The businessman has cited Oskar Schindler, who rescued Jewish

A group of Christian asylum seekers in Sweden were subjected to bullying tactics by Muslim neighbours for wearing the symbol of the cross. The group consisted of two Christian families who lived in an asylum house of approximately 80 individuals

Iraq’s Assyrian Christian population is seeking to reclaim territory they have lost to the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) since they overtook the region last summer and to create an autonomous region for themselves–in a free Kurdistan.

On April 24, 1915 the Ottoman Turkish leaders ordered the arrest of hundreds of notable Armenians in Istanbul and launched the systematic annihilation of Armenian as well as Assyrian Christians within the empire’s borders and throughout the Middle East. This day would become known as “Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day,” and a century later is the center of a persistent geopolitical controversy.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) charged into eleven of the 35 Christian communities along the Khabur River in Syria in February targeting Tel Tamer, which at the time was protected by Christian fighters and locals determined to defeat the terrorist group. This week, the Islamic State took another shot at conquering it.

Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) terrorists are now demanding $100,000 per head to free each of the 250-300 Assyrian hostages they presently have in custody, according to an officer within the Assyrian leadership.