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"The Assyro-Chaldean drama does not begin today"

2020-07-21T06:02:43.311Z


FIGAROVOX / TRIBUNE - Joseph Yacoub tells how the mountain Assyrians were massacred in August 1933 and how they found the exodus in Syria, then under French mandate. According to French and British archives, the Iraqi authorities would have their share of responsibility.


Joseph Yacoub is Honorary Professor of Political Science at the Catholic University of Lyon, the first holder of the UNESCO Chair in “Memory, Cultures and Interculturality”. A specialist in minorities in the world and Christians in the East, he has published Le Moyen-Orient Syrique, La face misonnue des Christians d'Orient (Salvator, 2019).

It is unfortunate to note that the drama of the Christians of the East does not begin today. There was the genocide of 1915-1918 under the Ottoman Empire. It is a question here of massacres, less known, which took place in August 1933 in Iraq, where the tragedy marked again the fate of the mountain Assyrians. This event, which is at the origin of their exodus in Syria, then under French mandate, aroused many echoes in Europe and was widely covered by the press. French and British diplomatic and military archives contain reports on the responsibility of the Iraqi authorities and its army in the massacres.

We must also point out an unprecedented fact. The British Royal Air Force (RAF) then took aerial photos of the burnt and demolished villages. But in the name of superior state interests, the authorities did not disclose them in their time. Considered “Top secret”, they will be accessible fifty years later, from 1984.

So what happened? First of all, some historical facts deserve to be recalled.

In September 1929, the British government, which had a League of Nations (League of Nations) mandate over Iraq since 1920, made known its intention to end this status prematurely in 1932. This rapid development gave rise to strong concerns among the Assyrians who sent several petitions to the League of Nations, because they feared for their safety and worried about equality of treatment and freedom of conscience.

The integration into Iraq of the Assyrian mountain survivors, refugees from Hakkari (Turkey), then encountered many difficulties, especially when it came to maintaining their traditional status.

The integration into Iraq of the Assyrian mountain survivors, refugees from Hakkari (Turkey), under the protection of the English, then encountered many difficulties, especially when it came to maintaining their traditional status to which they owed the sustainability of their existence. Also, all this comes up against enormous difficulties and gives rise to incomprehension. Baghdad refuses to grant them any autonomy as a minority (despite the declaration signed before the League of Nations on May 30, 1932), opposes their reuniting as a homogeneous group and seeks to dilute their national identity by dispersing them and rolling back power. temporal of their patriarchal institution. In fact, these Assyrians were seen as foreigners and the new Iraq wrongly saw in this minority a danger to its national cohesion and its own stability.

From then on, the situation became critical. In May 1933, Patriarch Mar Eshaï Shimoun was summoned to Baghdad by the Minister of the Interior, under the pretext of discussing the future of his community. He will be under house arrest for three months, Baghdad refusing to recognize his temporal authority.

Not feeling safe and seeing the situation become untenable, three months later, some Assyrian tribal leaders decided to leave Iraq around mid-July and entered Syria. On the night of August 4 to 5, returning to Iraq to look for their families, they found the road blocked by the Iraqi army in Faishkhabour. Shootings break out. The fighting was followed by massacres from August 7 to 15 by the troops of Colonel Békir Sidqi. In the Assyrian villages north of Mosul, appalling killings took place. The European press is outraged by these persecutions against "a small defenseless people".

The patriarch was deported with his family to Cyprus on August 18 after the British had agreed to welcome him to the island.

And it is in the village of Simélé that the massacres were the most odious. On this subject, the London correspondent of the newspaper Le Temps, Robert Cru, wrote on August 8, 1933: “Grim revelations have just been added to what we already knew about the atrocities which took place in the north of Iraq. A British official on tour found 315 Assyrians slaughtered. They would be peasants in no way involved in the recent disturbances on the Syrian border. ” The government of King Faisal I, while deploring these incidents, "gave its word of honor that such acts of savagery would not be repeated" (Le Temps, August 18), but one year of advancement was granted to all officers who had taken part in these operations, and the rank of general to their leader, Colonel Békir Sidqi ....

The Assyrian leadership reported more than 2,000 killed. Several villages were looted, destroyed and burned. The British colonel, RSH Stafford, then administrative inspector of Mosul, published in English a work on this Assyrian tragedy which marked him strongly. For his part, Professor JT Thomas Delos (1891-1974) who had reproduced accounts testifying to the massacres in Simélé, added: “The testimonies could be multiplied: what good? They are of a repeating horror. ”

There were numerous articles in the British and Swiss press (Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Times, Manchester Guardian ...., Le Journal de Genève). In France, the echo of these sad events was important (Le Figaro, Le Temps, Le Progrès, La France (Bordeaux). Le Progrès (Lyon) entitled August 20, 1933: "The massacre of the Assyrians in Iraq. Opinion British is outraged by the allegations of the government of Iraq and the deportation of the Assyrian Patriarch. ”

We retain two articles by the correspondent of Le Figaro in London, published on August 20 and 22, 1933. In that of August 20, entitled "The massacres of Assyrians in Iraq", we read an interesting analysis on the post-independence of Iraq. : “England having abandoned its mandate over Iraq, which was recognized as an independent nation and welcomed into the League of Nations, the result was not long to wait. The Muslims of Mesopotamia attacked the small minorities in their territory. Recently Assyrian tribes have been massacred.

According to the most optimistic information, there were over a thousand killed on the Assyrian side. Reports reaching the British capital prove the participation of King Faisal's regular troops against minorities in northern Iraq.

Iraq supports the Muslim Kurds against the Christian Assyrians. This is the truth. The unhappy fate of these latter is worthy of pity. They fought alongside the allies during the war, but after hostilities Turkey was given the country of Hakkari which was theirs and we tried to disperse them and put them at the mercy of their enemies the Kurds and the Arabs.

It decided (the government of Baghdad) to deport the leader of the Assyrian tribes, Mar Shimun. England immediately offered him asylum on the island of Cyprus. This fact caused great indignation in London. And it is written there (...) that such an action is not compatible with the commitments made by Iraq to the League of Nations on the subject of ethnic and religious minorities, we must not less bite the fingers of having recognized the independence of Iraq.

Sir Francis Humphrys, British Ambassador to Baghdad, left London yesterday afternoon by plane to Baghdad to meet with King Faisal.

And the journalist concludes: Let us hope, while waiting for the League of Nations to take care of giving a definitive home to the Assyrians, that the British representative will be able to impose on the sovereign of Baghdad the necessary measures to prevent further massacres. "

Under the title "Patriarch Mar Shimun accuses King Faisal", we read on August 22:

“Serious accusations against King Faisal were made by Patriarch Mar Shimun who arrived today in Cyprus, where he was deported from Baghdad.

The hereditary leader of the Assyrians said the king of Iraq had a great deal of responsibility for the massacres in which hundreds of his subjects perished, because it was at his instigation that two rebel Kurdish leaders would have taken the lead in the movement against the Assyrians.

In Semel, 325 Assyrians, women, children or old people, were murdered and more than 500 other Assyrians were massacred in the other villages. Far from calming down, he added, the movement against my co-religionists continues, threatening to decimate the whole tribe. "

Between yesterday and today, what has really changed for the Assyro-Chaldeans?

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-07-21

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