The Hague (AINA) -- Dutch MP Joel Voordewind, representing the CU Christian Union, is calling on the Netherlands to help Iraq's Assyrians establish their own police force for their own protection. Mr. Voordewind cites the example and precedent of the Kurds, who were persecuted by Saddam Hussein and who were allowed to develop their own militia and police to defend themselves.

Mr. Voordewind is also calling for the establishment of an Assyrian autonomous region for Assyrians in Iraq, to be governed and secured by Assyrian police and militia. The region would be established in the Nineveh Plain in North Iraq.

Mr. Voordewind is calling on the Kurds to help the Assyrians, saying the kind of aid they received from the international community they should also give to the Christian Assyirans.

"When I visited the Nineveh Plain in 2008," said Mr. Voordewind, "Assyrians showed me messages given to them from Muslims, saying 'you Christians dogs, leave or die.'"

"If we don't help them with an autonomous region," he adds, "they [Assyrians] will leave the country."

Mr. Voordewind has asked the minister of defense to help the Assyrians establish an autonomous region.

"The three big groups, Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites," says Mr. Voordewind, "have their own police and militia, only the Assyrians do not have this."