Assyrians: Remnants of the people of the ancient Mesopotamia, succeeding the Sumero-Akkadians and the Babylonians as one continuous civilization. They are among the first nations who accepted Christianity. They belong to one of the four churches: the Chaldean Uniate, the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Syrian Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East. Due to the ethnic-political conflict in the Middle East, they are better known by these ecclesiastical designations. The Assyrians use classical Syriac in their liturgies while the majority of them speak and write a modem dialect of this language. They constitute the third largest ethnic group in Iraq with their communities in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Russia and Armenia. Today they remain stateless and great numbers of them left their homeland and settled in Western Europe, the United States and Australia.

Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM): A political and nationalistic movement, which emerged in Iraq in 1979. This movement joined the Iraqi opposition front in its struggle against Saddam Hussein's regime. In 1985 three members of the central committee of this movement were executed in Baghdad.

Assyrian Democratic Organization (ADO): A political and nationalistic organization, which was founded in Syria in 1957. This organization has bases all over the Middle East as well as Europe and North America. Although similar attempts were made, in the turn of the century, for the establishment of an organized political movement (the Assyrian Socialist Party Urmia?Iran 1918; the Assyrian Liberation Committee, Iraq early 1920s), the Assyrian Democratic Organization remains the foremost-organized Assyrian political movement.

Assyrian Genocide: Between 1915 and 1918, over 750,000 Assyrians were systematically massacred in Urmia (now in Iran), Hakkari, Turabdin, Diarbaker, Scard, Mardin, Jezirah, Bohtan and Urfa (now in turkey) and the Syrian Hezirah by the so called 'young Turkish Republic' and its allies of Kurdish tribes and Persian fundamentalists.  In 1903 and on the eve of Iraq's admission to the Legue of Nations, another massacre was erected by the Iraqi army led by General Bakkir Siddqi against thousands of innocent Assyrian villagers in Simmeleh (north of Iraq).

The Political Dictionary of Modern Middle East
By Agnes Korbani
1995, By University Press of America, Inc. Lanham, New York, London
ISBN 0-8191-9579-0