Representatives from Australia's leading Assyrian institutions met recently with Tony Burke MP, Minister for Home Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship, and Chris Bowen MP, Minister for Climate Change and Energy, to discuss the ongoing humanitarian challenges facing displaced Assyrians in the Middle East.
The Assyrian Democratic Party has issued a forceful condemnation of recent measures taken by the Autonomous Administration in northeastern Syria, describing the closure of Christian schools and imposition of new curricula as a violation of indigenous rights and a threat to the region's cultural diversity.
Cleveland -- Two Assyrian brothers, Dr. Rabi Hanna and Dr. Gabi Hanna, have been recognized by Crain's Cleveland Business as notable leaders in healthcare technology for their pioneering work in cancer treatment. The Hanna brothers, who immigrated to the United States from Syria, were honored for their contributions through their company, Lamassu Biotech, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical firm.
(CNA) -- The archbishop of Homs for the Syriac Catholics, Jacques Mourad, said Islamic-Christian dialogue in Syria is facing a challenge arising from the official stance of Muslim sheikhs, who refuse to open the door to meeting and dialogue with other communities.
Since the early 20th century, particularly after the ill-fated 1923 Treaty of Lausanne for our people, Eastern Christians, especially the Assyrian people, have lived in a state of absolute subordination and a deep identity crisis. This struggle has been between their historical national belonging and the identities imposed upon them by the political regimes that came to dominate the region.
(AINA) -- Local Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq have pursued a quiet but systematic policy of granting Iraqi citizenship and residency rights to large numbers of Kurds, estimated at more than two million, arriving from neighboring countries such as Iran, Turkey, and Syria.
(AINA) -- The historic 2024 visit of the Assyrian Catholicos-Patriarch his Holliness Mar Awa III of the Assyrian Church of the East to Pope Francis marked an important milestone in relations between two ancient Christian traditions.
The bells of war rang throughout Iraq, and with each clang, Iraqis grew terrified of what their futures held. It was the summer of 1980. Saddam Hussein began assembling an army of over 200,000 soldiers -- at the time the second largest army in the Middle East -- its ranks filled with people from all regions of Iraq, Assyrians included. My father, Binyamin Youkhana, stood among them.
This morning, in the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father Leo XIV received in audience His Holiness Mar Awa III, Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, together with members of the International Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East.
In the hours after the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU) published a statement on Facebook, a message swirled across the internet: "The NPU is restored to its independent status." In reality, what unfolded on Oct. 20 is more complex. The NPU is an Assyrian fighting force, cobbled together in 2014 as locals volunteered to defend their towns from a surging Islamic State invasion.
Vienna -- In the hushed world of Assyrian (Syriac) manuscripts, where the faint ink of saints, poets, and scholars still murmurs through the centuries, damage is more than decay; it is silence. A tear in a vellum leaf, a page charred by humidity or neglect, is not simply a technical problem for preservationists.
Baghdad -- On Monday morning, October 20, 2025, Chaldean Patriarch Mar Louis Raphaël Sako welcomed Dr. Margarete Van Ess, head of the German Archaeological Mission in Najaf, along with Dr. Mohammed Hadi Badan, Director of the Najaf Antiquities and Heritage Inspectorate, and their accompanying delegation, at the Patriarchal Residence in Mansour, Baghdad (Baghdeda).
(AINA) -- Local Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq have pursued a quiet but systematic policy of granting Iraqi citizenship and residency rights to large numbers of Kurds, estimated at more than two million, arriving from neighboring countries such as Iran, Turkey, and Syria.
(AINA) -- The historic 2024 visit of the Assyrian Catholicos-Patriarch his Holliness Mar Awa III of the Assyrian Church of the East to Pope Francis marked an important milestone in relations between two ancient Christian traditions.
(AINA) -- The Assyrian Arts Institute (AAI) is an organization founded by Nora Betyousef Lacey in 2017 and claims to support Assyrian arts. AAI has sponsored a few events since its founding, including an Assyrian women's choir.
(AINA) -- On July 12 Iraqi president Abdul Latif Rashid repealed the decree recognizing the appointment of Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako as head of the Chaldean Catholic Church and which appointed him to the office of the waqf (وقف), the endowment which oversees all church property. The details of the events leading up to this action are exhaustively covered in this report by MEMRI.
(AINA) -- The use of the term "minority" to describe Assyrians in Turkey and later in Iraq is deeply tied to the political and nationalist agendas of these nations, particularly in the 20th century. While Assyrians are undoubtedly the indigenous people of the land of the two rivers (Mesopotamia), the term "minority" was used to undermine their presence, deny their historical rights, and...
(AINA) -- 'Syria is free'; thus screamed the Syrians as they celebrated the tumbling down of the criminal regime during a whole week. Thousands, even millions, of Syrians strolled the streets of the entire major cities of Syria. They were from all societal segments, strata, trends, genders, religious beliefs and non-religious ones, convictions, sects, confessions, parties, and orientations.
Do you worry about things? Do you wake up in the middle of the night, sweating about what might happen to you, to your family, to the world in general? I do. If you do too, rest assured you're not alone. It's a natural human trait, and it's something people have been doing for millennia.
The ancient copper industry in the Sultanate of Oman serves as compelling evidence of an advanced civilisation that evolved into a leading industrial power nearly five thousand years ago. Historical records from Sumerian and Assyrian civilisations document copper exports from Oman to Mesopotamia, while numerous archaeological sites across the country reveal extensive smelting remnants that...