Deputy co-chair of the Gozarto Education Authority Vivian Bahho-Oussi: We will keep defending our homeland Beth Nahrin until martyrdom

NORTH AND EAST SYRIA – On the seventh anniversary of the 2015 Khabur resistance, Deputy Co-Chair of the Education Authority of the Gozarto (Jazira) Region in the Democratic Autonomous Administration (DAA) of North and East Syria Vivian Bahho Oussi stated to the SyriacPress news desk that the martyrs are the angels on earth and that their sacrifices allow other people to live.

“February 23 was a painful day, but the Syriac (Aramean–Assyrian–Chaldean) people defeated terrorism,” said Bahho-Oussi. “Since the 1915 Sayfo Genocide until today, the Khabur resistance is the first real resistance of our Syriac people in confronting injustice and defending the land and people.”

The Khabur River valley is traditionally a pre-dominantly Suraye area who mainly settled there in 1930s after the Simele massacre of 1933. In 2015, terrorist organization Islamic State advanced on the villages of the Khabur displacing thousands and kidnapping nearly 250 Suraye.

Vivial Bahho-Oussi stated that during the Khabur resistance, it were the Syriac Military Council, the Syriac Security Forces (Sutoro), and other military and policing formations that defended and protected the homeland. She congratulated the families of the martyrs on the victory and great sacrifices made by their children. “We will keep defending Beth Nahrin (Mesopotamia) until martyrdom,” she concluded.

Attempts to make the area of the Khabur Region a separate administrative canton for the Suraye people have so far remained unsuccessful.