European Syriac Union holds working session to discuss issues of Syriac people

BRUSSELS — The European Syriac Union (ESU) held a working session in Brussels to discuss autonomy for the Chaldean—Syriac–Assyrian–people in Nineveh Plains in Iraq. The session was attended by member of the Belgian Federal Parliament Georges J.F.M.G. Dallemagne, three journalists, a member of the Crime Research Foundation, and Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian activists from our people.

The session was opened with a speech by ESU External Relations Official David Vergili in which he thanked the attendees for their work advocating for the rights of the Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian and Yezidi peoples in Beth Nahrin (Mesopotamia).

Member of ESU Youth David Karaça read a letter from the organization about the history of the Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian people and their presence in their homeland and abroad.

The attendees discussed the possibility of establishing autonomy for the Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian people in Nineveh Plains in Iraq. Dallemagne promised to stand by the Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian people by affirming their rights to autonomy in Nineveh Plains, recognizing the 1915 Sayfo Genocide, and the massacres committed by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Nineveh Plains against the Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian and Yezidi peoples.

Syriac activist Behnam Shany stated that, “We must all work together in order to establish autonomy, which is our legitimate right.”

ESU Co-Chair Fehmi Vergili thanked the attendees and spoke about the difficulties suffered in Beth Nahrin.

“Our people’s rights to establish autonomy must be obtained, so that our people can manage their own affairs by themselves with their own national and cultural privacy in Iraq,” Vergili stated.