On Thursday 25 April 2024, the Syriac League in Lebanon held a festival titled “A People Without Memory Dies,” at the hall of the St. Jacob of Serugh Syriac Orthodox Archbishopric in Sabtiyeh. This was on the occasion of the 109th anniversary of the Sayfo massacres that were committed against our people in the Ottoman state’s final days.
A series of speeches were delivered at the festival, starting with Phalange Party MP Nadim Bashir Gemayel, then Vice President of the Free Patriotic Movement Dr. Naji Al-Hayek, Secretary General of the Armenian Dashnag Party, MP Hagop Pakradounian, Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makari, and the closing speech was by the head of the Syriac League organising the festival, Malfono Habib Afram, in which he pointed out, “We will defend our cause because we are absolutely against murder, against terrorism, against violence, against hatred, and against terrorism. What we rejected for our people we reject for any people and we condemn it in any part of the world.”
The festival was attended by Counselor of the Syriac Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod, Mor Theophilos George Saliba, Patron of the Syriac Orthodox Diocese of Mount Lebanon and Tripoli Mor Chrysostomos Michael Chamoun, Director General of Syriac Culture and Arts in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region of Iraq Kaldo Ramzi Oghanna, as well as a group of our people in Lebanon.
It is worth noting that 24 April of each year is considered the anniversary of the Sayfo massacres, and it is the same day on which the Armenian massacres are commemorated, as more than 250 Armenian notables were arrested in Istanbul during World War I, under rule of the Ottoman Empire.
