ASSYRIAN UNIVERSAL ALLIANCE AUSTRALIA CHAPTER

Member, Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO)

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PRESS RELEASE

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Australian Federal MP Cites Assyrian in His Speech to Parliament

 

Sydney – 10 February 2011

On 10 February 2011, Mr. Chris Hayes MP, Federal Member for Fowler in Australia and a member of the Labor Party of Australia, cited the harassment and the violence perpetrated against the Assyrian population of Iraq due to their ethnic and religious differences from main stream Iraqi Moslem groups. The following is an extract from his speech that was delivered in the Australian Federal Parliament:

26 MR HAYES: To move—That this House: (1) notes that:
(a) for more than 2000 years religious groups such as Assyrians, Mandaeans, Chaldeans, Syriacs and other Aramaic speakers have called Iraq home;
(b) in 2003, Australia was part of the ‘coalition of the willing’ that invaded Iraq in the belief that Iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction;
(c) since 2003 there have been horrendous acts of persecution against these religious minorities in Iraq, including murders, bombings and extortion; and
(d) the Catholic Church reports that one million Christians have fled Iraq since the 2003 invasion; and
(2) recognises that:
(a) thousands of people are sheltering in Syria, Egypt, Jordan and the northern regions of Iraq because they feel they cannot return to their homes for fear of death and persecution;
(b) due to our part in the ‘coalition of the willing’, Australia has a moral responsibility to deal compassionately with these displaced people; and
(c) it will be a damning critique on humanity and the Coalition forces, who have vowed to protect the people of Iraq, if religious groups with such a significant historical link to the region are forced out at the hands of terrorists.

Mr. Hayes will soon lodge the Assyrian Universal Alliance petition calling on the Federal Parliament : The need to develop an Australian foreign policy that calls on the Iraqi government to take swift and definitive action to stop the vicious attacks against Iraq’s indigenous Christian Assyrians, instituting immediate measures to address the humanitarian crisis threatening their future in their homeland; to urge the Iraqi government to agree to the critical demand for an Assyrian Autonomous Region in the historical and ancestral Assyrian lands in Northern Iraq, as part of the modern day Federal Republic of Iraq.

On behalf of the Assyrian Universal Alliance-Australia Chapter and the Assyrian Australian community we would like to thank Mr. Chris Hayes MP, member for Fowler for raising the Assyrian issue with the Australian Government, for his great determination, sincerity and outstanding effort to support the indigenous Assyrian rights in Iraq and for his dedication in serving the people of his electorate.

For more information visit the link on page 25: http://www.aph.gov.au/house/info/notpaper/rnp021.pdf

Assyrian Universal Alliance - Australian Chapter PO Box 34, Fairfield NSW 1860 Australia. E-mail: auaaustralia@optusnet.com.au