SUP Co-Chair Sanharib Barsoum: The humanity that unites us is stronger than any weapon, dictator, or border

ZALIN (QAMISHLI), Syria – In a post on his Facebook and Twitter page, Co-Chair of the Syriac Union Party (SUP) in Syria Sanharib Barsoum confirmed that a common humanity unites all the peoples of the region – Syriacs, Arabs, and Kurds – and is stronger than any weapon, dictator, or border:

“The Lausanne Agreement wronged the Syriac-Assyrians and the Kurds. Instead, the agreement gave the right of life to only the Arabs and the Turks who were given a geography to govern. They ruled with the sword and fire, trying to exterminate all the people who do not recognize these nationalities. Since that time, those exterminated peoples, in addition to the Yazidis and the Armenians, live only to preserve their existence and identity and are subjected to various types of oppression over a hundred years.

When we reach a stage in which I, as a Syriac citizen, consider the issue of the Kurds to be my cause and defend it, as well as every Kurdish citizen considers that the cause of the Syriacs is her/his cause and defends it, and the same matter for the Arabs and the Turks, at that moment, we would be able to shake the thrones of the ruling regimes that consider these peoples to be of the lowest importance politically and administratively. However, these peoples are considered top concern of security apparatus. Over the last hundred years, we have not found any country in the Middle East that has issued a law criminalizing hate speech. Nowadays, some parties describe other peoples as refugees or foreigners in these countries or the remains of the Crusaders, because the regimes breathe and live on these contradictions from the Sayfo, the Syriac-Assyrian and Armenian Genocide of 1915 to the Hakkari Massacre of 1925, the Simele Massacre of 1933, the Dersim Massacre of 1937, the Halabja Massacre of 1988, the Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains Genocide of 2014, Al-Khabur in 2015, Afrin in 2018, Tel Abyad and Rish Ayno (Ras al-Ayn) in 2019, and Sinjar in 2020. We care about all of these crimes and the humanity that brings us together is stronger than any weapon, dictator, or border.”