French parliamentary efforts to recognize the 1915 Sayfo Genocide against Syriac (Aramean-Assyrian-Chaldean) people

PARIS – French MP Valerie Boyer submitted a bill to recognize the genocide committed against the Syriac people after her meeting with the Co-Presidents of the European Syriac Union, at the invitation of the Assyro-Chaldean Union.

In a step that would recognize the genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire against the Syriac people and other Christian minorities in the year 1915, French MP Valerie Boyer submitted a bill to the French Parliament to recognize the genocide. This came after Boyer attended a dinner banquet to which Fehmi Vergili and Alicia Isik, Co-Presidents of the European Syriac Union, were invited by the Assyro-Chaldean Union in France, with whom the European Syriac Union has worked to strengthen its relations for years.

Ravie d'avoir assisté au dîner annuel organisé par @AACF_Officiel portant sur le génocide de 1915 subi par notre peuple assyro-chaldéen-syriaque avec @TonyVergili
Au nom d'@esu_int je tiens à remercier @valerieboyer13 @fpupponi @karampatrick @BrunoRetailleau pour leur soutien. pic.twitter.com/PTVdDOZyz2

— Alicia Isik (@alicia_isik) February 23, 2022

The banquet was attended by a number of French deputies who had previously proposed such projects and tried to bring justice to the Syriac people by exercising their rights in the French Parliament, such as MP François François Pupponi, who had previously presented a project to recognize the genocide in French Parliament.

In a statement, Vergili said that the conversation during the banquet focused on the importance of recognizing the genocide. Those who suffered as a result of the genocide suffered great difficulties and fragmentation that forced them to leave their homeland and spread to various countries of the world, with the situation of the Syriac people in the Nineveh Plain being a good example of that. The European Syriac Union worked hard and established many activities, meetings and gatherings to establish the rights of the Syriac people, and recognizing the genocide would contribute to supporting and facilitating the establishment of those rights.

For her part, Valerie Boyer expressed her optimism about the possibility of Parliament accepting the draft law she submitted, and called on the European Syriac Union to set a date to attend Parliament sessions in the future, and to organize joint actions to bring justice to the Syriac (Chaldean-Aramean-Assyrian) people.

European #Syriac Union, ESU welcomes proposal of law by Madam @valerieboyer13 in the French Senate regarding recognition of #Sayfo1915 Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian genocide. pic.twitter.com/7NY06H4QmN

— EuropeanSyriacUnion (@esu_int) February 26, 2022