Word: assyrian
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Only his silk-vested and sombreroed courtiers realized how sick a man was King Feisal of Irak last month when, after his soldiers and some fierce border Kurds had massacred 600 Assyrians, he awaited, "in spite of my broken health," the arrival of a British investigator (TIME, Aug. 28). His impatience to leave for a "vacation" in Switzerland sounded, especially in view of his holiday in England only a few weeks prior, like an effort to gloss over the massacre. Last week came proof it was no such thing. The Assyrian trouble was quieted, but not a disturbance in lean...
James Ramsay MacDonald may not know his Byron but he knows his Bible. To this God-fearing Scot the present obstreperous Assyrian minority in the Kingdom of Irak are precious remnants of early Christian tribes. Hundreds of them were being butchered last week by the Irak soldiers and Kurdish mercenaries of lean, falcon-eyed King Feisal...
Bagdad newspapers accused the Assyrians of coming down like wolves on Irak troops and starting all the trouble. Their story was that an Assyrian rebel chief named Yaku has been weaving back & forth across the frontier between Irak and French Syria where he is suspected of obtaining arms. Not long ago Yaku, after treating with agents of the Irak Government, agreed to return and give up his arms. Instead he swooped with wolflike treachery upon a small Irak force sent to accept his surrender, killed 20 Iraki, wounded 45. Worse than treachery, according to the Mohammedan point of view...
...reprisal King Feisal's commander on the Irak-Syrian frontier, fierce Bekir Sidqui Beg, hired Kurds to reenforce his troops and started a slaughter of all Assyrians he could lay hands on, despite the fact that wolf-raiding Rebel Yaku headed a band of not more than 1,000 Assyrians, whereas the Assyrian minority in Irak numbers 40,000, mostly peaceful. In a few days of fanatical Mohammedan slaughter 600 Assyrian villagers were put to the sword, according to British investigators. In Bagdad suave Irak Premier Rashid Ali Beg called the British reports "exaggerated," partially confirmed them when...
Officially the Irak Government blamed the crisis not on Rebel Yaku but on the Assyrian Patriarch Mar Shimun, who was deported last week with his father and brother. At once the British Government offered these exiles asylum on the Island of Cyprus to which they flew in a British R.A.F. plane and demanded that King Feisal stay in Bagdad to punish the guilty - whether Christian or Mohammedan. To the Irak Legation in London falcon-eyed King Feisal promptly cabled: "Although everything is normal now in Irak, and in spite of my broken health, I shall await the arrival...