Islamists [Simele] massacres on Christians in Iraq, 70 Years before 'Iraqi freedom'

[Posting]

August, 1933

The Simele massacre, Iraq, the massacre & ethnic cleansing by Arab Muslims on Christian Assyrians, indigenous people

August 7th ~ "Assyrian Ethnic Cleansing," The New Assyrian Martyrs Day
“Though the body may perish, the soul lives on” August 7th of every year marks the Assyrian Martyrs Day, what began as the commemoration of the Simele massacre in 1933, where an estimated 3,000 Assyrians were systematically targeted by the Iraqi government to cleanse the Assyrian race, the indigenous people of Iraq whose roots date back to the Sumerians, the earliest recorded civilization in the mid 4th millennium B.C.
The Simele massacre took place in the provinces of Northern Iraq, where a killing spree took place among 63 Assyrian villages. But the Assyrian Martyrs Day represents all genocides and atrocities committed against the Assyrians, beginning in 1914 and 1915 where countless Assyrian villagers were massacred. In 1918 thousands of men, women and children were trafficked on foot en route to Baquba from Iran where more than one half fell to death unaccounted for, and without burial sites. In the same year, the Assyrian Patriarch, the late Mar Benyamin Shimun was assassinated. Not forgotten are the massacres of Sairt, Khoi, Soriya and Port Sharabkhana. The massacres of Mosul and Kirkuk, and the attack on Hebbaniya and Barwar have made their marks too on the pages of history. And let’s not forget the assassination of Youbert, Yousip and Youkhana in 1985 by the Baathist regime.
It has been 74 years since the Simele massacre, and the Assyrians of today, among all other Christians in Iraq, continue to suffer at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists. Let’s just call it what it is ~ ethnic cleansing. Yes, the year is 2007 and the international world is watching as the Assyrians flee their homes by the hour to neighboring countries, where an average teen at the age of fourteen does not have essential reading and writing skills in Jordan. Hence, Iraqis are barred from education in neighboring Jordan, where heavy sums of monies are levied on Iraqis to maintain temporary visa statuses.
Not only have the Assyrians become a stateless-people, but in homeland Iraq, they have become refugees, where they are threatened and coerced into abandoning their homes due to death threats. In some parts of Baghdad and Basra, it has become a familiar practice to approach families with a three-fold proposition: convert to Islam, pay a hefty tax (referred to jizya in Arabic), or face becoming beheaded. Oftentimes in the bigger cities, the Assyrian families are banning girls from attending schools for fear of kidnapping and rape. Read "The Departed" www.INNANAmagazine.com/editorials
On August 7th, the international Assyrian community commemorates its martyrs in traditional church prayers and feasts, honoring those who have died for their nationalistic beliefs. Gone, but not forgotten are our martyrs. We will tell their stories and speak their names for generations to come.

http://skokietalk.info/node/4760


August 18, 1933 The Simele massacre was the first of many massacres committed by the Iraqi government during the systematic targeting of Assyrian Christians of Northern Iraq in August of 1933. The term is used to describe not only the massacre of Simele, but also the killing spree that continued among 63 Assyrian villages in the Dohuk and Mosul districts that led to the deaths of an estimated 3,000 Assyrians.The Assyrian people at the time were emerging from one of the darkest periods of their history, for, during the Assyrian genocide at the end of the World War I, an estimated two-thirds of their population was massacred by Ottoman Turks and Kurds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simele_massacre


...the massacre of Assyrians in Iraq in 1933 ...

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/005566.php


Iraqi Assyrians Seek Self Administered Region Beginning with the Simele massacre of 3000 civilians in 1933, ... villages and to salvage the last remaining presence of the indigenous Assyrian Christians. ...

http://www.aina.org/releases/assyrianregion.htm