San Diego, CA (AINA) -- In a public forum organized by the Kurdish Center for Human Rights on February 18th, 2006, the Kurdistan Regional Government's Minister of Human Rights discussed their latest findings of mass graves filled with hundreds of victims of the Saddam Hussein regime. The victims were mostly Kurds belonging to the Barazani clan of the late Masoud Barazani, but also included 37 Assyrian (also known as Chaldean and Syriac) Christians belonging to the village of Harireh, neighboring the Barazani villages. The ministry's research shows the heroic stand that these Harireh Assyrian Christians took, along with their Kurdish neighbors, despite the option given to them by the Saddam Regime to denounce the Kurdish stand and be set free, as their wives and children had already done.

In an answer to a question from the participants on the potential of improving human rights abuses against the minority Christian population and having an administrative area for the Assyrian Christians of Iraq, the Minister answered: "To my knowledge, there are efforts by the KRG underway, in some villages, including Dairaboun and Ainishkeh to pay Kurdish families 10,000 each to leave these ChaldoAssyiran villages and return them to their rightful owners". The minister also added that "We have no objection towards the gathering of Christians, wherever they so choose, nor do we object to the creation of a new province for them in the Nineveh Plain, to gather all Iraqi Christians from around the world to return to their homes and villages".