Kingdom of Iraq slaughters Assyrians

What was Kingdom of Iraq slaughters Assyrians?

The Simele massacre (Syriac: ܦܪܲܡܬܵܐ ܕܣܸܡܹܠܹܐ, romanized: Premta d'Simele, Arabic: مذبحة سميل, romanized: maḏbaḥat Simīl), also known as the Assyrian affair, was a massacre committed by the Kingdom of Iraq under the leadership of Kurdish army general Bakr Sidqi. The massacre was committed against the Assyrian population of Iraq in and around the village of Simele in August 1933. Although primarily known for the attacks in the village of Simele, 54 villages in total are said to have been targeted during the four day period of the massacre, primarily in the Zakho and Simele Districts which are now in the modern Duhok Governorate.

The legacy of the massacre is known partly for imprinting the memory of persecution on modern Assyrian identity, while also being regarded as the turning point for the Assyrian naming dispute. Raphael Lemkin's coining of the term genocide was influenced by the events of the massacre.

How the event took shape

In August 1933, soldiers of the newly independent Kingdom of Iraq killed more than 3,000 Assyrian civilians in and around the village of Simele in the country's north. The killing spread across 54 villages over four days, driven by an army column under Kurdish general Bakr Sidqi that had been sent north to put down what officials called an Assyrian revolt. Most of the dead were Christians of the Assyrian Church of the East whose families had already survived the 1915 Assyrian genocide under the Ottomans and had been resettled in Iraq by British administrators barely a decade earlier, after 1921.