On April 15th, 2024, the Assyrian community of Sydney, Australia, suffered a shocking and malicious hate crime, as a leading bishop, Mar Mari Emmanuel, was stabbed during a live-streamed service. The attacker, a 16-year-old Muslim extremist, was promptly detained by parishioners and arrested by the Sydney police.

Nevertheless, the terrorist attack also wounded three others and nearly incited a riot as the Assyrian community, already facing extreme sectarian violence and plight, has been pushed to its limits. The deliberate attack has brought scars and continuous peril of questions if host countries can protect what the Middle East failed in.

Historical Assyrian Persecution in the Middle East

Assyrians in the Iron Age played a critical role in modern human development in libraries, science, astrology, and siege warfare. At the height of their power in the Neo-Assyrian period, their empire stretched from Mesopotamia to the corners of modern-day Iran, Armenia, Egypt, Turkey, and Cyprus.

Unfortunately for the Assyrians, overextension, civil wars, usurpations, brutality amongst their vassals, and lack of logistics to maintain a vast empire were their undoing. The Neo Assyrian Empire would collapse at the Fall of Nineveh and Harran, starting a millennium of persecution against them.

Assyrians would fall under various empires, such as the Babylonians, Persians, Romans, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, and Mongols. It would be the successor of the Mongols, the Timurid Empire, which would start widespread massacres of Assyrians as Tamerlane based his rule on fear and continuous wars instead of civil administration.

Under the Ottoman Empire, Assyrians were originally left unscathed until the late empire’s sectarianism in the 1800s. Alongside Armenians, Assyrians were greatly targeted in the Hamidian Massacres that killed a minimum of 200,000 and upwards of 400,000.

The height of Assyrian persecution would culminate in the Seyfo Genocide, which killed upwards of 750,000 Assyrians. Post-Ottoman capitulation in WWI, Assyrians were betrayed by the British and again targeted in the Simele Massacre by Iraqi troops and some Kurdish irregulars.

During the turbulence of Iraq’s post-American deposition of Saddam, extremist organizations such as al-Qaeda and ISIS would frequently target the persecuted ethnic group. The rapidly deteriorating state of Iraq and lack of centralized government during the US occupation would lead to the mass exodus of the Assyrians.

The Attack on an Assyrian Priest in Sydney

Assyrians now have a larger diaspora than those who live in their ancestral homelands of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran. The biggest Assyrian diaspora can be found in the UK, US, Australia, Sweden, Germany, Jordan, Russia, and Lebanon.

The Assyrian community in Australia recently experienced a targeted hate crime against their religious leadership and communion in Sydney on April 15th. During a livestream service, a radical Islamist stabbed Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, and several others were wounded.

Parishioners quickly subdued the attacker, who was a Sunni Muslim from Lebanon–a quickly who, to this day, suffered from religious and ethnic sectarianism.

Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was targeted due to being popular as he is heavily critical of extremist elements within Islam, which garnered Emmanuel numerous death threats throughout his time in the clergy.

The Bishop forgave his attacker, but tensions remain in Sydney–especially as the global spillover from the Israel-Hamas War is also exacerbating religious tensions and hate crimes.

Host Countries Must Emphasize Cohesion, Tolerance, and Safety

The Middle East, which hosts a continuous three millennium Assyrian community, is already one of the world’s worst powder kegs, and growing religious and sectarian violence against the marginalized group would cause further psychological trauma and socioeconomic hurdles for them.

Currently, other diasporas whose people are persecuted in the Middle East, such as anti-Mullah Iranians and Armenians, face violence from Islamic extremists, and failing to guarantee any diaspora safety will only further lead to potential escalation against Assyrians.

Facing extinction in their ancestral homelands in the Middle East, Assyrians ponder if the international community will step up and mitigate sectarian violence against one of the oldest persecuted ethnic groups today.

Julian McBride is a forensic anthropologist and independent journalist born in New York. He is the founder and director of the Reflections of War Initiative (ROW), an anthropological NGO which aims to tell the stories of the victims of war through art therapy.

By Julian McBride | AINA