By Ablahad Hanna Saka | member of the Bethnahrin National Council in Iraq

A true parliamentarian may be that leader who was born from the heart of his people, grew up amid their suffering and hardships, experienced their injustices and the bitterness of their days, and endured the harshness of circumstances and the betrayal of time. He therefore carried his people’s cause in his conscience and made defending their rights, existence, and identity a national and nationalistic responsibility that allows neither compromise nor submission to narrow interests.

A parliamentarian who deserves to carry the name of his people is not merely someone who has reached parliament. Rather, he is the voice of a people, the custodian of a cause, and an extension of history and identity. He is someone who knows where he came from, to whom he belongs, and what responsibility he carries toward previous, present, and future generations.

Unfortunately, however, our people have not always been represented by parliamentarians and leaders who were born from the heart of their suffering, experienced the bitterness of their reality, and understood the scale of their grievances and challenges, so that they could stand courageously before those with influence and decision-making power and present to them the reality of an ancient people, its history, identity, cultural, and civilizational heritage, and legitimate rights.

Where Is the Parliamentarian When His People Are In the Streets?

My national and patriotic spirit feels pain when a parliamentarian from our people is absent from a demonstration or public rally in which members of our community take to the streets to defend their land, demand an end to violations, reject demographic change, and safeguard their identity, existence, and rights.

What is even more painful is for non-participation to be justified by claiming that no official invitation was received from a party or political entity representing our people.

Here, a question that cannot be ignored imposes itself. Does a parliamentarian who represents a people and a cause need an official invitation to stand alongside his people when their land, rights, and identity are under threat?

Has defending the people’s cause become something that requires an invitation card?

Does a representative need party instructions in order to fulfill his moral and national duty toward his people?

A true parliamentarian does not wait for someone to invite him when his people’s cause is in the streets. He does not look for a seat in the front rows, nor does he ask who organized the demonstration before asking: What do my people need today?

In contrast, I look with sorrow at a parliamentarian from another component, classified among what are called “small components” or minorities, who carries his people’s project and demands to senior officials in the Iraqi state, knocks on the doors of decision-makers without hesitation, waits for no invitation from anyone, and does not look right or left when it comes to the rights of his people.

We also see him meeting with his constituents in broad seminars and gatherings, listening to their grievances, problems, and aspirations, and then faithfully conveying them to decision-makers and public opinion. So, where are the parliamentarians of our people in all of this?

When Political Subordination Becomes Stronger Than the Cause

Is it conceivable that political subordination could become a price we pay with our land, people, identity, history, and heritage?

Is it permissible for the interests of one or two individuals, or the future of this or that political entity, to be placed above the higher interests of an entire people?

The economic, political, and social rights of our people are not bargaining chips, nor are they privileges that can be surrendered to satisfy one side or another.

A politician who represents his people must place loyalty to their cause and the rights of their children above personal interests, party calculations, and electoral balances that change from one election cycle to another.

Political alliances may change, interests may shift and faces may change, but the land does not change, identity does not change, and history should not become a subject of bargaining.

Some of our people’s parliamentarians have reached positions of responsibility through the votes of individuals whose interests or rights are tied to them. Some have even reached office through the votes of parties and individuals who were part of political systems that directly or indirectly contradicted the interests of our people, or who participated in policies that harmed our towns, cities, and villages, contributed to the seizure of our lands, changed their demographic reality, or attempted to erase their historical features.

Hence, a direct question imposes itself. Can someone who reaches a position of decision-making through votes that do not believe in the cause of his people truly be the voice of that people?

A People Cannot be Reduced to a Parliamentary Seat

Our people possess a rich religious, intellectual, cultural, and civilizational heritage, as well as a deep historical memory, immense sacrifices, and an intellectual and cultural contribution that cannot be reduced to a parliamentary seat or a number of positions. Throughout history, our people have been a people of culture, literature, poetry, music and melodies. A people of thought, writing, translation, and documentation. They have addressed humanity through the mind and spirit and built their civilization through knowledge and creativity, not through a culture of bloodshed, killing, blackmail, fraud, domination, exploitation, and cheap opportunism.

It is unfortunate today to see attempts aimed at reducing the name of our Aramean (Syriac) nationality or stripping it of its national and historical substance and confining it merely to language and culture, as though nationality can be separated from a people’s history, memory, and existence. Even more painful is that some of these attempts sometimes come from members of our own community, and not only from outsiders.

Language is part of identity, culture is part of identity, and religion is part of a person’s memory. However, the national identity of an entire people cannot be reduced to a single element or stripped of its historical and civilizational context.

From Lausanne to Attempts to Erase Memory

This brings back to memory what the region witnessed at various historical stages, including the period following World War I and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, when the maps of the region were redrawn and the circumstances of its peoples and communities were rearranged within new political contexts. This resulted in the marginalization or neglect of the rights of indigenous peoples and components, rather than their full recognition as distinct national and historical communities.

Those seeking to marginalize our identity today understand very well that our people are not a people without a history, nor are we a community that arrived recently in this region. Rather, we are a people with great intellectual, scientific, cultural, and civilizational capabilities who made an authentic contribution to the advancement of human civilization, made sacrifices and paid heavy prices for survival and continuity.

Therefore, the attempt to weaken our identity or strip it of its historical substance is not merely a passing linguistic or terminological matter. It can become a political project aimed, directly or indirectly, at weakening an indigenous component of the Middle East and undermining its right to land, existence, and representation.

How shameful it is for a people with such faith, heritage, knowledge, sacrifices, and civilizational contributions to be reduced to a narrow description or a temporary political calculation!

Peoples that have experienced the meaning of faith, understood the value of knowledge and contributed to building civilization should be the first to recognize that erasing, reducing, or concealing the identity and history of another people cannot constitute a victory for any people. Rather, it is a loss for humanity as a whole.

Aramean-Syriac: Identity, Memory, and Existence

The Aramaic-Syriac nationality is not merely a language of the past, nor simply a heritage preserved in books and museums. It is a living identity, a continuing heritage and the memory of an ancient people that remains committed to its existence, land, and history.

Whoever seeks to erase this existence through political falsification or demographic change is seeking to empty the land of its people, then empty its memory of its substance, opening the way for history to be rewritten in accordance with new political interests.

This is what we have witnessed in some areas where our people were displaced, their demographic composition changed, and their historical and civilizational landmarks were erased or neglected. Attempts then emerged to attribute that heritage to peoples or groups that came to those areas at later stages of history.

Is this how history is written?

Can a people be erased from its land, then its memory erased, and then it be claimed that its history and heritage never existed in the first place?

History is not written by force, nor is it established through a fait accompli. It does not change by changing the names of cities, villages, and streets, or by erasing the landmarks of the people who own the land and concealing their traces.

Maps may change, regimes may change and the balance of power may shift, but historical truth does not die because someone decides to ignore it.

The memory preserved by gene...

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