US envoy to Iraq pledges support for Nineveh Plain Region
Mark Savaya, the United States Special Envoy to the Republic of Iraq, has said he intends to help the Assyrian towns and villages in the Nineveh Plain in a recent interview.
Speaking to the Assyrian news outlet Chaldean Press, Savaya is quoted saying he will help the Assyrian villages of the Nineveh Plain: “Many of these villages were destroyed by ISIS, and I am going to help them.”
Savaya is also reported to push for the implementation of article 125 of the Iraqi constitution which grants minoritized groups administrative rights in their areas. If implemented, the Nineveh Plain Region could become a new province, giving locals greater autonomy over the area. Assyrian groups, most notably the Assyrian Democratic Movement, have advocated for the establishment of a Nineveh Plain Province since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. The Iraqi government took an initial step to establish the new province in early 2014 but the onslaught of ISIS later that year derailed the process.
Mark Savaya's family is originally from Tell Keppe, one of the towns in the Nineveh plain that was devastated by ISIS.
The three Assyrian MP:s elected recently to the Iraqi parliament announced the formation of a bloc to represent Assyrians and other non-muslim groups in the country.
Remarks made by Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako during Christmas Mass in Baghdad have sparked controversy in Iraq, after his use of the term “normalization” was interpreted by some as carrying political implications in a country where such language is legally and socially sensitive.
Murad Ismael, newly elected as the first independent Yazidi MP in Iraq, is calling for formal recognition of Yazidis as a distinct ethnicity, challenging Kurdish efforts to label the community “Yazidi-Kurds.”
The three Assyrian MP:s elected recently to the Iraqi parliament announced the formation of a bloc to represent Assyrians and other non-muslim groups in the country.
Award-winning Assyrian-American journalist Joe Snell has released Our Assyrian Story, a collection of reporting from Assyria documenting the struggle of an ancient nation to preserve its identity amid persecution, land encroachment, and forced assimilation.
Christmas has increasingly become a politicized holiday across Assyria, as a range of state and non-state actors seek to instrumentalize the Christian holiday to project an image of tolerance, score legitimacy points, or discredit rivals.
The eradication of a people and their identity is not carried out solely through physical destruction, but also through a systemic process of identity destruction, coercion, misclassification, and structural pressure, writes Dr Daniel Sada.
The Assyria Post
