Special Issue 5, Winter 2011

The Genocide of the Assyrians was officially recognized by the Parliament of Sweden, alongside that of the Armenians and Pontic Greeks on March 11, 2010.  The Assyrian genocide also has been recognized by the New South Wales (NSW) Local Government in Australia, by the South Australia State Parliament, and by several governors of the State of New York.  The International Association of Genocide Scholars, the world’s leading genocide scholars organization, overwhelmingly passed a resolution officially recognizing the Assyrian genocide, along with the genocide against Ottoman Greeks.

Governments that have allowed Assyrians to establish monuments commemorating the victims of the Assyrian genocide will be found in France, Russia, Australia, Sweden, and the United States. Sweden’s government has pledged to pay for all the expenses of a future monument.  There are three monuments in the U.S., one in Chicago, one in Columbia and the newest in Los Angeles, California.  There have been some recent reports that suggest that Armenia is moving to create a monument to the Assyrian Genocide next to the Armenian Genocide monument.

The Assyrian genocide is referred to as Sayfo or Seyfo based on the Aramaic for “sword.”  Some use an Aramaic name which literally means “killing of the Assyrian people.”  In some countries alternative terms such as “Assyrian/Syriac/Caldean genocide” are employed.

The Assyrian population in the Ottoman Empire numbered about one million at the turn of the twentieth century and was largely concentrated in what is now Iran, Iraq and Turkey.  Violence directed against Assyrians prior to the First World War was not new.

Thus, the Assyrian community of Diyarbekir was massacred during the 1895-96 Hamidian Massacres.

Source: Wikipedia: Assyrian Genocide.  Retrieved September 1, 2010.