Ermagan, a journalist in Germany, has made it her mission to report on the worldwide persecution of Christians. Ninve Ermagan/Facebook
My family are Assyrians, members of a Christian minority in the Middle East. Even this simple statement trips many people up. “Oh, so you’re Syrian, wonderful! I have many Syrian friends!” The first time, I still manage to laugh. But when I keep saying A-SSYRIAN, deliberately emphasizing the A, and my counterpart still insists, “Syrian, yes, I understood,” my patience wears thin. “We are Assyrians, one of the oldest peoples in the world, and we are Christian. We have nothing to do with Syrian Arabs!” What usually follows are wide eyes and an equally vast ignorance.
Many Assyrians also bristle at the term “minority” and would immediately correct me. Because we are not a minority. We are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia, a people whose historical homeland spans parts of present-day Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. This is our home, and there we are neither visitors nor guests.
Yet the truth also demands acknowledgment that Assyrian Christianity has been pushed to the brink of insignificance through genocide, displacement, and centuries of persecution, in our own homeland.
Growing up with stories of persecution
As a child, my family told me repeatedly about the persecution and exclusion we faced. And by the time I was a teenager, these stories horrifically came to life, as a new wave of persecution hit my people in Syria and Iraq. I could watch the killing on television: destroyed churches, beheaded men, women abducted as sex slaves.
Even as a child, an incredible rage built up inside me, partly because hardly anyone reported on it. And partly because, for many people, we Assyrians simply did not exist as a concept. How can anyone advocate for a group that nobody knows?
When I asked my uncle why the media never covered our fate, he simply said: “You’ll have to become a journalist yourself if you want the world to learn about it.”
And here I am.
Why I report on Christian persecution
In my work, I have made it my mission to report on the worldwide persecution of Christians. Why? Because this is about religious freedom—an issue that concerns us all. Whether you are personally religious or not, and whether you belong to this faith or not, is irrelevant.
People are being killed because they hold different religious convictions. Their identity, their dignity, their very way of being is taken from them. This is something our Western society—especially one rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition—must never accept.
Christianity is one of the most persecuted religious communities worldwide, particularly in countries with Muslim-majority populations. This fact is often relativized with arguments such as: Christians are, after all, the largest religious community in the world. But this does not make the situation better—it makes it worse. How can it be that such a large group cannot live safely in so many regions?
I understood early on that many find it uncomfortable to publicly advocate for Christians. The topic is quickly co-opted as “right-wing,” which makes many reluctant to address it openly. But this taboo only serves to mock the victims.
How selectively this attention operates is illustrated by the example of Nigeria. Recently, the situation there did receive increased focus—but not because of burned Christian villages, abducted women, or regular massacres. Instead, it took political pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, who accused the Nigerian government of genocide and hinted at consequences. This was promptly met with a storm of indignation—and once again, relativization: “Muslims are being killed too.”
Of course they are. But the numbers, the patterns, and the targeted, coordinated attacks speak a clear language: Christians are disproportionately affected.
The Islamic State and the silence that followed
When persecution by the so-called Islamic State began in Iraq and Syria in 2014, I realized that acceptance of this violence is alarmingly widespread. For me, this persecution ranks among the worst crimes in recent history against Assyrians—second only to the genocide in the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turks in 1915.
And again, large parts of the churches and the international community remained strangely silent.
I still remember all too well the demonstrations in Germany that were attended almost exclusively by those directly affected and their Assyrian relatives. Hardly any church representatives were present, and only a few people from mainstream German society. A committed German Christian said something at one demonstration that has stayed with me ever since: “Silence is murder.” Then he grinned and added, “Usually the German saying goes a bit differently—but in this context, silence cannot be golden.”
I still remember running to demonstrations as a teenager to protest the slaughter of Christians—yes, that is what it must be called, because that is exactly what it was. And I felt ashamed in front of my classmates. Many did not understand my commitment. Making posters in your free time and marching at demonstrations seemed uncool.
Today, at 27, I know this: Unlike many of my classmates, I did not have the privilege of being apolitical. I could not stay silent and watch—especially not when others looked away.
The deafening silence of Muslim communities
What disappointed me most, however, was the resounding silence of many Muslim communities in Germany. Should they not have filled the streets and shown solidarity with those affected?
In Cologne in 2017, Muslim associations announced a major demonstration against terrorism and extremism. Of the promised 10,000 people, only a few hundred showed up in the end. A damning indictment.
After the brutal beheading videos and mass shootings that ISIS presented to the world, there was a brief wave of outrage—but then the familiar, prolonged silence set in. Perhaps, from a cynical perspective, it was even a “triumph” for these murder gangs that the suffering of ethnic and religious minorities briefly entered the public spotlight. But lasting consequences never materialized. International protective measures, such as safe zones for Christians in Iraq, were never seriously implemented.
Most of the time, discrimination and the violent actions of Islamist actors in the region are simply tolerated. Attacks rarely make it into headlines or political debates.
A history written in blood
The violence against Christians in Iraq and Syria is extensively documented—and it is by no means new. As early as 2004, a series of attacks on churches shook the country. Targeted attacks on Christian institutions occurred repeatedly, including the assault on the Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic Church in Baghdad in October 2010, in which more than 40 people were killed.
Before the Iraq War in 2003, approximately 1.5 million Christians lived in Iraq. Today, estimates suggest only about 150,000 remain. After the U.S. invasion, violence against the minority increased massively, partly because Christians were increasingly perceived as “friends” of the hated Americans and the West. While the country’s total population has nearly doubled since then—from about 20 million to over 40 million—the proportion of Christians has shrunk to well under one percent.
In Syria, too, Assyrian Christians were specifically targeted. In 2015, ISIS kidnapped numerous civilians during raids on villages along the Khabur River and drove out entire communities.
Those affected tell me repeatedly that as a Christian in Iraq and Syria, you had to be prepared at any moment for Islamists to storm churches, blow themselves up, or shoot indiscriminately at worshipers. That they would stop buses, search for cross necklaces—and execute those wearing them.
Faith stronger than death
What impresses me again and again—and in a certain way also frightens me—is the attitude of many Assyrians who, as former ISIS hostages, explained to me: They could have converted to Islam at any time. But they would rather have chosen death than betray their faith.
They meet violence with nonviolence, endure the unimaginable, and constantly ask themselves: What would Jesus have done? He would have borne the hatred, the violence, the pain.
I do not know if I could do the same. My life means too much to me, and I would risk almost anything to preserve it.
We are witnessing a development that should alarm us. The moment is approaching when the last Christians in Iraq and Syria will pack their bags.
In Iraq, believers are increasingly terrorized by Shiite militias supported by Iran. In Syria, the situation under the new interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa has further deteriorated—a man who previously operated as a jihadist and, as the former leader of the al-Nusra Front, was once among the world’s most wanted men.
For many Christians, this reality means no security, no prospects—only flight.
And with that, a millennia-old Christian presence in the Middle East threatens to come to an end.
