Chaldean Digest - November 2019
What Others are Saying About Chaldeans
They helped Trump win Michigan, then his immigration crackdown split the community
By Liz Goodwin
Trump captured the votes of many in this deeply religious enclave with his antiabortion stance, and dazzled them with his specific promise on the campaign trail to protect Christian minorities in the Middle East and crush the terrorist group ISIS. When Trump denigrated other immigrant groups, referring to Mexicans flooding across the border as “rapists” and calling for a total ban on Muslim immigration to the United States, some Iraqi Christians — who are also called Chaldeans, after the name of their branch of the Catholic Church — saw no threat to their community whose members largely entered the country legally.
Influential figures among them threw their support behind Trump, boosting his long-shot candidacy. A Chaldean priest was photographed giving a blessing to Trump in a brief meeting the October before the election in an image that was shared widely on Facebook. Other Chaldeans attended Trump rallies holding signs promising support from Christians from the Middle East.
Militias' ongoing harassment of Christians in Iraq, Syria focus of hearing
By Kurt Jensen, Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON — The genocide conducted by the Islamic State against Christian communities in Iraq and Syria has turned into continued harassment by Iran-backed militias and shows no signs of abating soon.
This was part of the bleak picture explained Sept. 26 at a hearing conducted by the U. S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
There were outlines of atrocities, but few designated solutions, despite the millions invested in Iraq by the U.S. government.
"Recent years have been especially unkind to Iraqi religious minorities," said Tony Perkins, chairman of the commission. "The rise of ISIS in 2014 compounded these challenges."
The Islamic State, or IS, as it is more commonly known now, was driven out of its last caliphate stronghold in Syria in April. But outliers have been conducting guerrilla attacks, and this is compounded by the militias, called Popular Mobilization Forces, surrounding the Christian villages and turning homes into empty hulls without plumbing or electricity.
Baghdad Bishop: Iraqi Christians Fear ‘New Rise’ of Islamic State
By Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D
An Iraqi bishop says there is a “strong fear” among the people the Islamic State may return, thanks to the Turkish offensive against the Kurds in the north of Syria.
Bishop Basil Yaldo, auxiliary bishop of Baghdad and the closest collaborator of the patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, told AsiaNews an intervention by the international community is “fundamental” to apply the necessary “pressure on Turkey” to curb the offensive.
Bishop Yaldo said that Turkey’s military operation launched by Ankara in northern Syria has ignited fears of a “new rise” of the Islamic State. “We have already experienced this and there is a strong fear that it may return,” he said.
According to the bishop, the Turkish program against the Kurds in northern Syria is will almost certainly cause repercussions in neighboring Iraq, which also fears a new influx of war refugees that it has no means of receiving.
“For the moment, the situation is still under control, but the picture is complicated because even here the situation is not peaceful,” Yaldo said, as can be seen from recent “demonstrations in Baghdad and in other areas of the country.”
3,000-year-old Assyrian stamp unearthed in southeastern Turkey
By Daily Sabah
Archaeologists discovered a 3,000-year-old stamp believed to belong to the Assyrians during excavations carried out at the Zerzevan Castle in southeastern Turkey's Diyarbakır province.
The excavations at the castle, which was used as a military settlement area during the Roman-era, were initially launched five years ago under the coordination of the Culture and Tourism Ministry.
The stamp was found near the underground sanctuary located within the castle compound, which contains remnants of the city wall — which is 12-15 meters high and 1,200 meters long —including observation and defense towers, a church, an administration building, cereal and ammunition storehouses, an underground sanctuary, rock tombs, water canals and a cistern.
Aytaç Coşkun, who leads the excavations, told Anadolu Agency that the discovery is very important since it shows that the castle area actually dates back almost 1,200 years earlier than was previously thought.
Çoşkun said that the chlorite stamp, which has a clay imprint, is the only example of its kind due to the unique figures engraved on it.
Syria’s Christians are suffering in silence
By Marlo Safi
The White House’s decision to move aside and allow a Turkish assault in northeast Syria highlighted the morass that is the US’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Criticism of the decision, rebuked as ham-fisted and reckless, was bipartisan. This is the kiss of death for the Kurds (the US’s allies, who are left defenseless), the largest ethnic minority in Syria, and one of the victims of Turkey’s human rights abuses that have spanned centuries.
Lost in the turbulent tangles of the news is another one of Turkey’s victims, a population of Christians who are a distinct ethnic group that has been historically targeted by the Ottoman Empire. The Assyrians were slaughtered alongside the Greeks and Armenians in the genocide of 1915 and then again in 1933 during the Simele Massacre, at the hands of Arab-Iraqi nationalists. Their persecution continued throughout the century, foisting upon them a life of transience and displacement. Today, the diaspora population is larger than the population of Assyrians in their homeland, which is parts of northern Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran.
Syria’s Christians and Yazidis fear that with Turkey’s move into the region, they will be targeted and ethnically cleansed, a reasonable prediction given Turkey’s history of genocide of minorities. On Wednesday, Turkey began its attacks in Qamishli, a town inhabited by Kurds and the descendants of Assyrian refugees of the 1915 genocide.