The ??use plenary approved on Monday a resolution that condemns the massacre of the Assyrians. The draft was submitted by independent Socialist MP Kostis Efstathiou.
In his introductory statement, Efstathiou spoke about a genocide that affected ”some of our brothers, not far from Cyprus”.
He said that the Assyrian genocide completed in the most bloody and inhumane way the genocides of the Christian minorities of the Armenians and the Pontic Greeks.
The Cypriot parliamentarian said that the Assyrians were a great civilization who developed philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, and urban planning thousands of years ago. He added that the issue has particular importance for Cyprus as 300 ascetics of the order Alamanos in Syro-Palestine, persecuted by Arab raids, found refuge in Cyprus and are known as the Alamanoi.
He made a detailed historical review of the persecutions and massacres of the Assyrians by the Ottomans and the genocide in 1933, with the same tactics as the genocide of the Armenians and Pontians, namely mass massacres, death marches without food and water, raids, rapes and sale in the slave markets of the East.
“The House of Representatives of the Republic of Cyprus, a victim of ethnic cleansing, today recognizes and condemns the genocide of the Assyrians, while simultaneously declaring the seventh of August as a day of remembrance of the genocide. On 07/08/1933, mass massacres took place in the established state of Iraq, thus closing the bloody picture of persecutions, oppressions and massacres with peoples as victims,” the MP said.
The initiative was praised by all parties that voted in favor.