(AINA) -- From one repressive regime to another, the current situation of ethnoreligious minoritiesin Syria depicts a faint picture of the appalling and austere treatment of Syrian detainees. Mr. Yacoub Hanna Shamoun, an Assyrian Christian from Syria has been detained without due process for over twenty years in Syria's horrendous AlSaydnaia prison. Hehas repeatedly been denied access to a legal representative and has been kept in isolation from his family, the legal system and human rights institutions.

The tragic story of Mr. Shamoun began in 1985 upon his return to his ancestral homeland from seeking employment in Lebabnon since 1972 with his family. Their return was sparked by a fallacious amnesty issued by Syria's late President Hafez AlAsad to all citizens who had failed to serve the required military term in late 1985, as was Mr. Yacoub's case. Mr. Yacoub and his brother Fawaz returned to Syria and surrendered themselves to the Conscription Department in Qamishly (a town located in the Syrian Jazeera, south of Nisibis, southeast Turkey) to serve the required military term as their national duty. To their surprise, the State Security Forces of the treacherous Baath government detained the two men on the night of July 1st 1985 and remanded them to the custody of the local prison where they had been tortured and beaten for a month.

After a detailed introduction of John Kanno, the curious Assyrians finally got their chance to hear from him. On the aesthetics level, the audience found Kanno a tall and slender man in his forties, impeccably dressed speaking in a softened British accent.

British historian, Ara Sarafian (Gomidas Institute, London), was one of the main speakers at a recent commemoration of the Assyrian Genocide (or Seyfo) of 1915. The event was at Aula Magna, Stockholm University on 24 September and was organised by the Assyrian Youth Federation in Sweden, who asked Sarafian to give a lecture on the 1916 British Parliamentary report,

The Treatment of Armenian in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16.  One of the central questions in Sarafian’s paper dealt with the relative absence of the destruction of Assyrian Christians in the British report. Was it an oversight or was the report prejudiced? This question arose in more forceful terms at the conference, when a member of the audience suggested that there was a 200 page Assyrian section to the blue book which was stolen by Armenians and was never published as a consequence.