The French National Assembly is due to vote on Monday on a text calling on the government to recognise as "genocide" the massacres inflicted in 1915-1918 by the Ottoman forces on the Assyro-Chaldeans, a Christian community originally from Mesopotamia.
The "motion for a resolution," tabled by the chairman of the Renaissance group (presidential majority) Sylvain Maillard, responds to a recurrent request from this community for recognition in the same way as the Armenian genocide.
Co-signed by opposition MPs, mainly from the ranks of the Republicans (LR, right-wing), it echoes a similar text, largely adopted in February 2023 by the French Senate.
A vote along the same lines in the National Assembly on Monday would not be binding on the executive. The latter, although reticent about this parliamentary initiative, is not expected to call for a vote against it, according to a government source.
While the Armenian genocide "is recognised by many countries and international organisations, is considered to be one of the four genocides officially accepted by the UN, and is commemorated on every 24 April by France, the massacre of the Assyrians suffers from a lack of recognition as a genocide," states the explanatory memorandum to the resolution.
In fact, "between 1915 and 1918, the Assyrian population of northern Mesopotamia (south-eastern regions of present-day Turkey and north-western Iran) was massacred and forcibly displaced by Ottoman and Kurdish troops," says the text, which also refers to their "forced conversion to Islam" organised by "the Ottoman regime."
The resolution therefore "invites" the government "to officially recognise as genocidal the mass extermination, deportation and suppression of the cultural heritage of more than 250,000 Chaldo-Assyrians' and to "condemn" this "genocide."
