Scholars call on Knesset to recognize genocide of Assyrians, Greeks

PanARMENIAN.Net - In a significant milestone for efforts towards the worldwide recognition of the Assyrian genocide, nearly thirty internationally renowned holocaust and genocide scholars, and Assyrian and Greek social, cultural and religious groups, have written to the Israeli Knesset calling for the inclusion of Assyrians and Greeks in the Knesset's forthcoming legislation on remembrance of the Armenian Genocide, reported the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA).

The letter, sent on January 27 by the Assyrian Genocide Research Center to numerous members of the Knesset of the State of Israel, noted that hundreds of thousands of innocent Assyrians and Greeks "faced targeted killings, rape, abuse, destruction of home and villages and the razing of churches at the hands of the Ottoman Turks and their Kurdish allies" during the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923.

"Many do not know", the letter notes, "that genocide was also committed against other ethnic groups, namely the Assyrians and Greeks, who were living from time immemorial on their ancestral lands, which were within the borders of the Ottoman Empire in 1914."

Despite the extensive corpus of academic research and archival material proving the reality of the genocide, the Turkish Republic has until now refused to formally recognize the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks. Numerous governments, parliaments and international bodies have recognized the genocide. Most recently, the parliament of Sweden endorsed a resolution to officially recognize the Assyrian genocide, alongside those of the Armenians and Greeks.

Assyrians remain hopeful that the Knesset's committee will also examine inclusion of the Assyrian and Greek genocides in any future parliamentary resolution.