Massacre of Khoi (Eye witness description of one event)

 

In early 1918, many Assyrians started to flee present-day Turkey. Mar Shimon Benyamin had arranged for some 3,500 Assyrians to reside in the district of Khoi. Not long after settling in, Kurdish troops of the Ottoman Army massacred the population almost entirely. One of the few that survived was Reverend John Eshoo. After escaping, he stated [7]:

You have undoubtedly heard of the Assyrian massacre of Khoi, but I am certain you do not know the details.

These Assyrians were assembled into one caravansary, and shot to death by guns and revolvers. Blood literally flowed in little streams, and the entire open space within the caravansary became a pool of crimson liquid. The place was too small to hold all the living victims waiting for execution. They were brought in groups, and each new group was compelled to stand over the heap of the still bleeding bodies and shot to death. The fearful place became literally a human slaughter house, receiving its speechless victims, in groups of ten and twenty at a time, for execution.

At the same time, the Assyrians, who were residing in the suburb of the city, were brought together and driven into the spacious courtyard of a house [...] The Assyrian refugees were kept under guard for eight days, without anything to eat. At last they were removed from their place of confinement and taken to a spot prepared for their brutal killing. These helpless Assyrians marched like lambs to their slaughter, and they opened not their mouth, save by sayings "Lord, into thy hands we commit our spirits. [...]

The executioners began by cutting first the fingers of their victims, join by joint, till the two hands were entirely amputated. Then they were stretched on the ground, after the manner of the animals that are slain in the Fast, but these with their faces turned upward, and their heads resting upon the stones or blocks of wood Then their throats were half cut, so as to prolong their torture of dying, and while struggling in the agony of death, the victims were kicked and clubbed by heavy poles the murderers carried Many of them, while still labouring under the pain of death, were thrown into ditches and buried before their souls had expired.

The young men and the able-bodied men were separated from among the very young and the old. They were taken some distance from the city and used as targets by the shooters. They all fell, a few not mortally wounded. One of the leaders went to the heaps of the fallen and shouted aloud, swearing by the names of Islam's prophets that those who had not received mortal wounds should rise and depart, as they would not be harmed any more. A few, thus deceived, stood up, but only to fall this time killed by another volley from the guns of the murderers.

Some of the younger and good looking women, together with a few little girls of attractive appearance, pleaded to be killed. Against their will were forced into Islam's harems. Others were subjected to such fiendish insults that I cannot possibly describe. Death, however, came to their rescue and saved them from the vile passions of the demons. The death toll of Assyrians totalled 2,770 men, women and children.

Statement of German Missionaries on Urmia.

The latest news is that four thousand Assyrians and one hundred Armenians have died of disease alone, at the mission, within the last five months. All villages in the surrounding district with two or three exceptions have been plundered and burnt; twenty thousand Christians have been slaughtered in Armenia and its environs. In Haftewan, a village of Salmas, 750 corpses without heads have been recovered from the wells and cisterns alone. Why? Because the commanding officer had put a price on every Christian head… In Dilman crowds of Christians were thrown into prison and driven to accept Islam. [6]

 

 

Recognition

 

The genocide of Assyrians has yet to be officially recognised by any country. The only logical reason is that most countries don’t want to risk jeopardising trade relations with Turkey.

 

As an illustration; In June 2008, Yilmaz Kerimo and Ibrahim Baylan both from the Swedish Social Democratic Party, brought a bill to the Swedish parliament for the recognition of the genocide. The parliament resoundingly voted against it, 37 to 245.

 

 

Sources:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_Genocide

 

1. The Plight of Religious Minorities: Can Religious Pluralism Survive? - Page 51 by United States Congress

2. The Armenian Genocide: Wartime Radicalisation Or Premeditated Continuum - Page 272 edited by Richard Hovannisian

3. Not Even My Name: A True Story - Page 131 by Thea Halo

4. The Political Dictionary of Modern Middle East by Agnes G. Korbani

6. Abraham Yohannan The Death of a Nation: Or, The Ever Persecuted Nestorians Or Assyrian Christians ISBN 0524062358, pp. 126–127.

7. Joel Euel Werda. The Flickering Light of Asia: Or, the Assyrian Nation and Church, ch. 26

 

 

Assyrian Genocide in Iraq (1933)

The massacre of Christian Assyrian villagers in the town of Simmele, North Iraq, and its surroundings was the second[9]. On August 8-11, 1933 the Iraqi army, under the leadership of Bakir Sidqi, a Kurd, killed 3000 men, women and children in the village of Simmele and its surroundings. This was one of the first acts of the new Iraq, having gained its independence from the British in 1932.

 

It was this Simmele Massacre which inspired Raphael Lemkin, the author of the UN Convention on Genocide, to coin the term Genocide [10].

Assyrian Massacre (1829 Iraq and Syria)

In October, 1829 the Kurdish leader Rwandez initiated a pogrom against Assyrians of the Syrian Orthodox Church in North Iraq and Syria. The first village that was attacked was Bit-Zabda, where 200 men were killed. Subsequently, the Kurds stormed the Asfas village, first slaying the leader, Deacon Rais Arabo, and then Reverend Aziz. Eighty children fleeing to a nearby valley were attacked and murdered by the pursuing Kurds. The young girls of the village were unclothed. The girls were enslaved while the others were shot on-site. The attackers then moved to Nisibin, on the border of Turkey and Syria, and repeated similar atrocities.[11]

 

 

Assyrian Massacre (1842 Turkey)

 

In 1842 Badr Khan Beg, A Hakkari (southeast Turkey) Kurdish Amir, combined with other Kurdish forces led by Nurallah, attacked the Assyrians, intending to burn, kill, destroy, and, if possible, exterminate the Assyrians from the mountains. The Kurds destroyed and burned whatever came within their reach. An indiscriminate massacre took place. The women were brought before the Amir and murdered in cold blood. The aged mother of Mar Shimun, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, was seized by them, and after having practiced on her the most abominable atrocities, they cut her body into two parts and threw it into the river Zab, exclaiming, "go and carry to your accursed son the intelligence that the same fate awaits him." Nearly ten thousand Assyrians were massacred, and as large a number of woman and children were taken captive, most of whom were sent to Jezirah to be sold as slaves, to be bestowed as presents upon the influential Muslims.[12]

Documented Genocides of Christian Assyrians since year 630 A.D.

Since 630 A.D., the coming of Islam, Assyrians have suffered 30 genocides at the hands of Muslims. Subtracting 661 (the first genocide) from 2007 and dividing by 30 yields 45 years -- the frequency of Assyrian genocides. On average, every second Assyrian generation has suffered genocide. [14]

In addition there are most likely hundreds of cases of mass murderings, hundreds of thousands of murders.

Sources:

 

9. The Simmele Massacre, http://www.aina.org/releases/20040805022140.htm

10. 1933 Assyrian Genocide in Iraq Inspired the Word 'Genocide', http://www.aina.org/news/20070115185021.htm

11. Deacon Asman Alkass Gorgis. Jirah Fi Tarikh Al-syrian, 1980, pp. 14. Translated by Subhi Younan

12. Abraham Yohannan. The Death of a Nation. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916, pp. 111-112 http://www.aina.org/reports/ig.pdf

14. Genocides Against the Assyrian Nation, http://www.aina.org/martyr.html

 

Turkey: Back to the Future?

 

By Andrew G. Bostom

 

Once again, Turks are storming the heart of Europe. This time, it is not by the sword, but rather in seeking to join the European Union (EU). Once inside the gates, they will gain access to the great cities, wealth, and power of their ancient rivals. Smoothing the way for incorporation of the former would-be conqueror into borderless Europe is an errant belief that Ottoman Turkey was a tolerant multi-cultural civilisation. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

Recently, security analyst Frank Gaffney wrote a courageous essay, featured in the Washington Times, urging that Turkey's bid to join the EU be rejected. Gaffney highlighted the Islamic Shari'a-based religious revival under the current Erdogan regime as the keystone to his cogent argument. Despite Gaffney's legitimate concerns regarding the current Erdogan government, he reiterates a common, politically-correct canard which ignores the direct nexus between Erdogan's ideology, and the goals and behaviours of Erdogan's Ottoman ancestors. It is ahistorical to speak of "Ottoman tolerance" as distinct from Erdogan's "Islamism", because the Ottoman Empire expanded via three centuries of devastating jihad campaigns, and the flimsy concept of Ottoman tolerance was, in reality, Ottoman-imposed dhimmitude, under the Shari'a.

 

With formal discussions regarding Turkey's potential EU accession currently underway, this three part essay will elaborate on several apposite historical phenomena: Jihad and dhimmitude under the Ottomans, focusing primarily on Asia Minor and Eastern Europe; the failure of the so-called Ottoman Tanzimat reforms to abrogate the system of dhimmitude; and the dissolution of this Shari'a state whose bloody, convulsive collapse during the first World War included a frank jihad genocide of the Ottoman dhimmi population, once considered most loyal to the Empire, i.e., the Armenians. I believe such an analysis is particularly timely, in light of a December 2004 United Nations Conference which lionised "Ottoman tolerance" as a role model, "… to be adapted even today…" [emphasis added], and Gaffney's reiteration of this profoundly flawed conception, despite his own bold opposition to Turkey's entry into the EU.