IRAQ: Bethnahrain Patriotic Union delegation attends Halabja commemoration in Ankawa

On the 33rd anniversary of the Halabja genocide, President of the Bethnahrain Patriotic Union (Huyodo Bethnahrin Athroyo/HBA) Yusuf Yahqub Matti and a number of HBA officials, participated in the Halabja genocide memorial on the morning of March 16, 2021 in the Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian city of Ankawa, Erbil.

The HBA delegation was present at the invitation of Ankawa district governor Mr. Rami Nuri Siawash. HBA President Yahqub Matti made a press statement in which he expressed the importance of keeping the memory of the martyrs of Halabja alive.

In his statement to the press, Yaqoub Matti explained the violent fanatic Halabja campaign that took place against the peoples of Iraq’s northern region: the Kurds, the Chaldeans-Syriacs-Assyrians, and others. For the Chaldeans-Syrians-Assyrians, the Halabja genocide was just one of the many dark bloody stations since the Sayfo Genocide of 1915, he said. From 1915 to the present day, they passed through many ethnic cleansing campaigns carried out by Iraqi governments and the Ottoman state.

From the Sayfo Genocide of 1915 by the Ottoman-Turks and Kurds to Simele in 1933, Sorya in 1969, Anfal in 1988, the suicide attack on the Syriac Catholic Church of Our Lady of Deliverance (Sayidat al-Nejat) in 2010, the displacement of the Christian Chaldeans-Syriacs-Assyrians from Baghdad between 2005 (~700 thousand) and 2014 (~50 thousand), to the displacement of Basra residents (2006-present) and Kerkheslokh (Kirkuk, since 2005).

The displacement and atrocities against the Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian people in Mosul and the Nineveh Plains from 2004-2017 at the hands of ISIS, was the latest ethnic cleansing campaign in which more than 1,700 Christian Chaldeans-Syriacs-Assyrians and Armenians citizens were killed. All their economic, social, cultural, security, religious, educational and educational structures were destroyed.