Syriacs, Assyrians demand rights enshrined in new Syria constitution

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The next Syrian constitution must guarantee the rights of the Syriac and Assyrian Christian minorities as the communities face an uncertain future with an Islamist group now in power, a party leader said on Saturday. 

“These are requests at a national level. Syriacs and Assyrians do not have any rights as stipulated by the Syrian constitution and the previous regimes that governed Syria,” Sanharib Barsoum, co-chair of the Syriac Union Party, told Rudaw. “In the next Syrian constitution, there must be a role given to these people to run the country.” 

He stressed that Christians must be allowed to celebrate their culture and rights, and the Syriac language must be officially recognized. 

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the rebel offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad, is a one-time al-Qaeda offshoot and an internationally proscribed terror organization. There are concerns that it may seek to impose Islamic law though the new authorities have tried to reassure Syrians and the international community that they will respect all minorities.

The caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, told Italian daily Corriere della Sera this week that the new Syrian state will “guarantee the rights of all people and all communities in Syria.”

Barsoum said that while HTS has not approached them for meetings through official channels, their treatment of Syria’s minorities has so far been “acceptable and good.” 

“The situation for Christians in general at the beginning was scary and these fears still exist for many Christians in Aleppo and Damascus,” he added. 

The Syriac Union Party is affiliated with the Kurdish administration in northeast Syria (Rojava). It holds three seats in the Rojava government and has its own police force, named Sutoro (security in Syriac). 

Talks will soon begin with relevant parties regarding the formation of the new government in Damascus, according to Barsoum, who called for “a greater presence of Syriac Christians” in the transition period. 

“In the near future, there will be a delegation to Damascus,” he said, with the Syriac Union Party being part of both a Kurdish-led administration delegation and a “special delegation” of Christians in Syria. 

Assyrian and Syriac Christians in Syria have faced persecution for decades. Before the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Assyrians made up around 30,000 of the 1.2 million Christians in Syria, but attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) and Turkish-backed militants have pushed the community to the brink of extinction in the country.

The fertile Assyrian region along the Khabur River was attacked in 2014 by ISIS militants who kidnapped at least 220 Assyrian Christians before releasing them in small groups for ransom.