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Kurdistan: Assyrian Christians celebrate
their New Year 6757
9.4.2007 |
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April
9, 2007
Erbil, Kurdistan region (Iraq), --
Descendants of Iraq's ancient Assyrians are enjoying
12 days of parties and parades to celebrate their
New Year, a pagan rite that glorifies resurrection
and life and dates back millennia. Forget 2007 -
this is 6757 for Assyrian Christians whose ancestors
carved the cradle of civilisation, ruling the
magnificent Assyrian and Babylonian empires before
scattering into an ever-dwindling minority across
the Middle East. Flocking to the haven of Kurdistan
region (Iraq) rather than the ancient capitals of
Nineveh and Babylon, which are awash with violence
in modern-day Iraq, Assyrians began the most
important event in their calendar on April 1.
Wearing colourful traditional dress, men, women and
children parade through the streets and dance,
hailing the arrival of spring, budding trees and
blossoming flowers in early seasonal warmth before
the punishing heat of summer. "We will celebrate for
12 days as we did in Babylon and Ashur," said Nissan
Beghazi, chairman of the Assyrian Cultural Centre in
the Kurdish city of Dohuk, which is this year a
focal point of celebrations for the first time.
Officially banned by successive regimes in Baghdad,
including under the late Saddam Hussein, Assyrian
Christians in the Arab part of northern Iraq have
openly celebrated their new year in autonomous
Kurdistan region since the 1991 Gulf War.
"Celebrations are being held in Dohuk with people
coming from Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk. For security
reasons it was difficult to do that on the Nineveh
plain," said Akad Murad, spokesman for the Assyrian
Democratic Movement. The festivities began on April
1 with a parade outside the Virgin Mary Church in
Kurdish city of Dohuk-a far cry from the private and
secretive manner in which Assyrians say greetings
were exchanged under Saddam. Holding flags and
colourful feather plumes, men in black hats thronged
the streets with women kitted out in traditional
beaded headdress and flowered dresses, as onlookers
and their children looked on.
The traditional line-up also includes parties and
gathering to listen to poets who recite the story of
creation. Another custom still practised in Chaldean-Assyrian
villages is planting wheat or barley seeds in vases
some weeks before April, putting them on the window
sill, and watching seedlings grow as a symbol of new
life. "After the March 1991 uprising, our people
resumed celebrations on this historic day after
years. In 1992, the Kurdish parliament decreed April
1 an official holiday, but it hasn't been
implemented," said Berghazi. But behind the
festivities lie fears for the future in a country
where mass emigration has badly hit the Christian
minority that enjoyed a relatively protected status
under Saddam.
"Our celebrations this year come with our people
facing killings, kidnappings and displacement. Our
cultured and skilled people are facing the brunt of
this violence," said a statement from the so-called
Mesopotamia Federation. Mass emigration has seen
Iraq's Christian community slump to around 600,000
out of a total population of 27 million.
The same Christian organisation also expressed hope
that Christian migrants would return one day to live
with the rest of their Iraqi brethren in peace. Two
elderly Christian women, one in her 80s and the
other in her 60s, were shot dead when gunmen broke
into their house in Kirkuk late last month in the
restive northern oil capital. Until the Assyrians
converted to Christianity in the first century and
accepted the Gregorian calendar, they celebrated on
March 21 - a date still marked by Kurds as a New
Year's on the Kurdish calendar 'Newroz', Nawroz is
the traditional Kurdish new year, The year 2007
corresponds to the Kurdish year 2619. All Kurds
around the world are celebrating the new year 'Newroz'.
The Kurdish calendar starts at 612 BC. Arabs, and
Iranians as new year or the start of spring.
AFP
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