ANKAWA: USCIRF Chair Nadine Maenza meets with Bethnahrain Patriotic Union President Yusuf Matti

ANKAWA, Iraq – During her working visit to northern Iraq, US Commission on International Religious Freedom Chair Nadine Maenza met with Bethnahrain Patriotic Union President Yusuf Yahqub Matti at the party’s office in Ankawa, Erbil. The two sides discussed the situation of the Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian people in Iraq, in particular the situation of the Syriac heartland of the Nineveh Plains.

Bethnahrain Patriotic Union President Yusuf Yahqub Matti explained the difficult demographic and economic situation in northern Iraq, the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, and the Nineveh Plains and conveyed to Maenza the national demands of his people. Matti and Maenza also discussed the Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian’s party’s main policy point about creating an autonomous region for its people in Iraq.

USCIRF Chair Maenza has been in the Middle East for some time now. In North and East Syria she attended a conference on religious coexistence. In Iraq she met several Arab, Kurdish, Yazidi, and Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian officials and acquaintances, visited the former President of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq and leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party since 1979 Masoud Barzani, and she attended the consecration of the Syriac-Chaldean Bishop for Nohadra (Dohuk), along with Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian KRG Minister of Transport and Communications Ano Abdoka.

Related: A Future for Christians in Iraq: A Proposal from Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian Political Parties

A Future for Christians in Iraq: A Proposal from Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian Political Partieshttps://t.co/xViLxsMwnH

— SyriacPress (@SyriacPress) March 7, 2021