Exclusive - Ishtar TV.com
The Chaldean Syriac Assyrian
Political Organizations Assembly, held on Wednesday, 13/6/2012, an emergency
meeting, at the headquarters of the Syriac Assembly Movement, in the town of
Bartella, which was devoted to discuss and to find the immanent solutions to
the issue of the demographic change in Bartella and the rest of the Christian
areas. The meeting hosted Mr. Mounther Elias Shaba,the Chairman of Bartella sub-district
council, Mr. Yoseph Yacob Yoseph, member of Bartella sub-district council, and Mounther
Sabah Markus, Chairman of Bartella Tribes Council, Mr. Shamoun Bashir Zora,
Second Deputy Chairman of the Council and the legal consultant Maher Saeed
Matti.
During the meeting the attendees listened to the guests and through an
extensive details about what is happening in Bartella, of the continues threats,
abuses and demographic change, also the pressures they face by several entities
seeking to make an evident crack in the demographics and social formula in
Bartella specifically, which was all documented in the letters, the official
documents and the documents issued by the government agencies, as well as the claims
brought by some agencies and ministries to allocate some lands for large housing
projects, for building an academy, a school and a Hussainia affiliated to the Shiite endorsements; as it
is known that Bartella sub-district Council includes 10 members, and amongst
which only 4 members represent our people, and who refused to vote for these
projects; and that the Bartella municipality provided all the facilities and
assistance for the provision of such lands, after deciding earlier not to do so,
and that the Bartella sub-district director stood with those parties, while he
could have, and according to the authority entitled to him, rejected such
projects and abuses, but it seems that there is a political pressure and an
agenda seeking to make this change, justifying those abuses under false
pretenses that have no relevance to the reality, as much as being a mere
prejudice against the rights of the CSA component. It should be noted that the Governor
of Nineveh Province instructed earlier to remove all the abuses on state
property belonging to the municipality of Bartella, and it was supposed that the
chairman of the Administrative Unit would comply to the orders and the decisions
of the Governor, yet, this action has not been taken in spite of directing an
official letter from the Governor of Nineveh to Bartella sub-district director;
what concerns us here is to remove any of these abuses and not just turn them
off temporarily and then raised them every now and then.
It is important that our CSA people who are living in Iraq or those living in
the Diaspora, must confirm our cohesion and unity, as they are needed today
more than ever before, to stand as one and to use all the available means of
media to serve our fateful issues; all the media operating in Iraq, and especially
the writers and media correspondents of CSA people, must pay attention and be
more effective in transferring of the facts of what is happening in these areas,
to all the Iraqi people in general, so as to be aware of what happened and is
happening to us; the issue is a priority and we must leave all the debates and the
discussions that no longer are useful, for today we are in a real danger, and
our cause today is no longer the marginalization issue, but it’s the issue of rooting
us out of our country, and if they succeed in that, God forbids, then what is
happening today in Bartella will be the
starting point for what will happen to the other areas in the Nineveh Plain,
and the rest of the areas where our people exist, in Iraq.
We say publicly to the Iraqi Government and to those concerned, that we demand
to have our rights according to the Iraqi Constitution, and that the
realization of these rights is not a favor, as much as being the duty of the
government, to be provided to all the components and of any affiliations,
without distinction or discrimination, because the right of equal opportunity
is guaranteed to all the Iraqis, and they all have the equal rights and duties,
regardless of their race or their gender or religion ...etc, as the
marginalization of a segment of the Iraqi society is a clear and deliberate failure
in the government's performance of its duties, and for this, we feel there is a
great scheme behind the continued increase of immigration, that submits on the
purpose of seizing our possessions, our lands and our history, and we all hope that
the Iraqi Government will not make the same mistake that took place in some
countries, when they practiced this kind of persecution and intimidation
against the Christians in their countries, and thus lost the ethnic diversity
of their citizens and now are paying the price for what had been done in the
past, because the owner of a right do not give it away no matter what, because
of the existence of the International Courts, the UN Committee of Human Rights ,
the social justice and the other organizations that take on their
responsibility to protect the threatened Peoples; the price of such practices
will be dearly to those governments, and by the humanitarian, ethical, moral
and material level. The Iraqi Government, led by Nuri Al-Maliki, dunned to take
a firm and honest position in this regard and to find the immediate solution to
what is happening in these regions, which is at the heart of its duties, and we
should know that the formation of committees "Committee for the needs of
Christians", the suspensions, the temporary statements, the courtesies and
the verbal promises are no longer of any good and they are Air in the Net.
Today it is required from all Iraqi parties and the humanitarian and civil organizations,
and all the Iraqi people to take a firm and serious position, in order to stop
what is happening in Bartella and the other areas of our CSA, according to the
principle of belonging to one country, also to stand together to renounce and to
respond to all the attacks and abuses on the people of this area, because we are
Iraqis and we are part of this country, and actually we are the main part of
it.
The Iraqi Parliament, and in particular the representatives of our people of
the two lists, have the greatest responsibility to prove their role and their position
toward the fate of this people, so in this sense, they should demand
immediately from the presidency of the
Iraqi Parliament, to convene an exceptional meeting in this regard, in order to
find the immanent solutions for this problem, and to hold the negligent in the
executive and the security authorities, responsible for breaching the powers entitled
to them and using their influence for their private and partisan benefits; the
statements, the temporary solutions and the promises would be inadequate to
solve any problems, and they have to be more assertive and determined to demand
their rights, no matter how necessary, also they should have a clear position,
if the interest of their own people will not be taken into consideration.
The Kurdistan Regional Government is also required to intervene, for the fact
that the area is covered by article 140 and lies within the disputed
territories, and because this Government has a political, a security and a
regulatory presence in those areas, and it must not accept any abuses or a demographic
or a population change that are practiced on our people, for the mere purpose
of being targeted, and it should play a real role to protect our people in
these areas, through its positive role in the Iraqi political scene.
While some people might think that the CSA Christian people represent the
weaker link, we say to them that you must be dreaming, and you are making a big
mistake, because the Christians across the ancient and the modern history, have
always been one of the pioneers in the intellectual, the cultural and the
scientific fields , also in all the achievements, and they participated in the revolutions
calling for the freedom, the real democracy and the respect for privacy,
religions, coexistence and honesty and they were always sincere in their duties,
in being constructive, and have the courage through their active participation
in the anti-dictatorship parties, even if it came to sacrifice their lives for
the principles they believed in; the last years showed how patience they can be
to endure all the forms of threats and intimidation, in order to maintain their
privacy, and to survive on the land of our fathers and forefathers, Iraq, the
one that is cherished by them as every Iraqi. They showed that they were able
to protect themselves at all costs, but we always seek to use a constructive peaceful
dialogue to resolve the problems, and always to resort to, because law is above
everyone, no matter what their position might be. So we demand of all, to commit
to the laws and the articles of the Constitution, which brought them to rule
Iraq today, and for this, all the political blocs operating in the Iraqi
political scene are concerned to protect this component, with the other
components, and all the Iraqis, by providing a safe living for them and
maintain their privacy; what we hear and see in the media of praising and flattering
Us, is only a peal media, if the
statements and the promises have credibility, then this is the time to prove it
and to apply those words, the allegations and the statements on the ground, so
as to proof the sincerity of intentions, we do not want to be a victim of the political
conflicts that are taking place today in Iraq, and they must not use us as a
card or a tool to achieve their own gains.
Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Political Organizations Assembly
Bartella on June 13, 2012
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