Armenia is ready to receive Assyrian refugees, if they reach the border

Armenpress 16:09, 27 February, 2015

YEREVAN, 27 FEBRUARY, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian authorities immediately responded to the call of the Assyrian community to receive the Assyrian refugees having been displaced from their indigenous territories in Syria. In response to the alarm that was sounded during a February 27 press conference, Head of the State Migration Service of the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Emergency Situations of the Republic of Armenia Gagik Yeganyan told "Armenpress" that the Republic of Armenia is committed by law to protect persons subject to persecutions, irrespective of gender and national belonging, granting them the right to legal residency, certain social and cultural rights and not to return to their country of origin. "The problem is that those people have to reach Armenia in some way so that they can present their problems to the Armenian authorities. They have to write an appeal at the border, after which the process prescribed by law begins," Yeganyan added.

Representative of the Assyrian community of Armenia Razmik Khosroev called on the Government of the Republic of Armenia to take an adequate decision and allow the Assyrians having been displaced from their homes in Syria by ISIS to freely enter Armenia. Professor of the University of Chicago, expert on genocide studies Anahit Khosroeva mentioned that on the night of February 22, ISIS attacked nearly 32 Assyrian-populated villages along Khabur River in Syria, after which nearly 1,200 Assyrian families became refugees.



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