Assyrians, as a nation are on the verge of extinction and although the attention of the international community has been attached to this problem since the end of 2015 no concrete steps for stopping this process have been taken yet, Senior Researcher at Institute of History of National Academy of Sciences Anahit Khosroyeva announced at a press conference related to the issue of Assyrians in the Middle East in the context of the recent events.
According to her, there are around 35 villages in Syria, where Assyrians lived; nearly 100 thousand people were exiled, from which 500 were captured and 130 from them are still prisoners of ISIS. She emphasized that situation in Iraq is the same; Assyrians live there in churches and refugee camps.
"The USA's policy is not clear in this context, as they do not recognize genocide of Christian Assyrians, while genocide of Yazids was recognized by them", she noted, emphasizing that she does not see any difference between these two genocides, as they both are similar crimes against humanity. According to her, around 100 thousand Muslims, which were not subject of any persecutions, received visas for staying in the USA while entrance of Christian Assyrians is forbidden to the country.
According to Anahit Khosroyeva, there is another factor which makes the situation of Assyrians' living in the Middle East more problematic, the matter concerns to Kurds, who want to establish Iraq and Syrian Kurdistan and in this context clashes have become more frequent between Assyrians and Kurds, who try force out Assyrians from their place of living.